


heart out on my sleeve

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Barebacking, Bottom Louis, First Time, Friendship/Love, Hufflepuff Niall, M/M, POV Louis, Quidditch, Recreational Drug Use, Slytherin Louis, lowkey ot4 vibes, magical theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:49:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Zayn drops out of Hogwarts just before their last year in Slytherin, Louis is left adrift. In a high-level Charms class tasked with finishing the rebuilding of the castle, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Niall Horan of Hufflepuff, and learns more than he expected along the way. (A Harry Potter AU set eight years after the Battle of Hogwarts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart out on my sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petals/gifts).



> i am #soblessed to have had an excuse to finally write my dream hp au, in the form of this wonderful nouis prompt about sweet hufflepuff niall breakin' down snobby slytherin louis' walls. this came out so self-indulgent and way too long and i could have written it forever, but i hope it's something like you wanted, lexxel!! and i hope y'all will forgive me for accidentally writing a fic about louis (falling in love with niall) for this exchange. yikes.
> 
> thanks [lucy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/balefully), [arielle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ceaseandexist), [sharon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/justaboat), [clare](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fervent) and [amy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker) for all the plot help, editing and encouragement, without which this would not have happened, and maddy who got out of the game in 2009 for lending me one of your OCs from when we were hp babies, you're my original #1. title, of course, is from ILLUSION. [magic sparkles emoji]

The morning after the first party of Louis' last year at Hogwarts dawns hellishly early and clammy cold in Slytherin, the bright light through the lakewater lancing in his porthole window and waking him with a nauseous jolt. He hadn't meant to end up back here, always aims to crash elsewhere when they're drinking for just this reason. He thought they'd been in Gryffindor last night, or maybe Ravenclaw, though that seems somewhat unlikely. But all the fucking towers look the same to him.

He rolls out of bed in shorts and pulls on a black and green house jumper over his bare chest, doesn't bother keeping quiet as he stumbles in socks out of the dorm, tripping over floating spellbooks and sleepy bodies who didn't make it back to their beds scattered like booby traps around the common room. There are a few younger kids already sprawled about studying, or doing the approximation of it, munching on burnt toast, the kind that's all that's left at the end of breakfast. No way he's missed it already. It feels like it's about six in the morning. 

He nicks someone's egg sandwich as he passes by their table where they're turned away, rooting around for something in their bag, and despite his hangover he doesn't miss a beat going out the dungeon door. He can hear their cry of dismay just before it slams behind him, and it's like a soothing balm for his aching head. 

The corridors are mostly empty as he makes his way up and up, from one of the lowest points in the castle to the highest. It must still be early, then, first Saturday of term and everyone was drunk last night. Maybe those first years just really like burnt toast. 

He nearly slips in his stocking feet ducking behind a tapestry near charms to avoid the Bloody Baron, looking far too business-like going down the corridor for this early in the year, and anyway Louis doesn't imagine he's gotten over his grudges from years past. So Louis used to like to try to trap the ghosts in the sunniest most humid greenhouse to see what would happen. Not like he'd managed it, but the Baron doesn't tend to discriminate between successful versus botched pranks. 

It's nice to be a seventh year, he thinks as he passes by another nearly-patched hole in a stone wall, another little memorial beneath it. They've been working on rebuilding since just before he got here and it's looking like it'll be finished before he graduates, which feels good somehow. Like closure for something he barely remembers. But they've all been helping with the repairs, everyone fifth year and up since the start. He expects they'll get their work assignments in Charms in the next couple weeks. 

It's strange, because Louis usually prefers a more "fuck off and drink and sit around" approach to school and schoolwork, but he doesn't mind the renovation bit. Hogwarts is home, though it's been degrees of broken the whole time he's been here. The fix-ups are the least he can do. 

The Astronomy Tower has some of the most conspicuous traces of it all, though, and that's where he's headed. They've got a usually-sleeping portrait of Albus Dumbledore up there, even a plaque about the whole thing, a selection of his international honors magicked to the repaired wall. Louis stops to blink at it like he always does when he opens the door, frowning. It might be the hangover this time that makes his stomach flop as he skims the bit about Severus Snape. They've learned enough about all that for a lifetime but Louis still doesn't really get it. He loves his house with furor, all his housemates do too, and yet sometimes it's as if they'll always be the only ones.

Sunlight flashes off the back of someone's blond head as Louis rounds the corner, and he has to throw his hand in front of his eyes, staggering and groaning. This is supposed to be his special private post-party spot. It seems too early in both the morning and the year to get detention over hexing some stupid Gryffindor for having no sense of propriety, though on the other hand, is there really such a thing as too early for hexing Gryffindors? Louis levels his wand, sighing ostentatiously and leaning on the wall behind where the kid is sat in his favorite perch. 

Mystery intruder turns, and Louis frowns, lowers his wand by half. Niall Horan from Hufflepuff, their Seeker. Fifth -- no, sixth year now. "Hey, I know you," Louis says in lieu of confirming any of this. Horan smiles a sleepy, stupid Hufflepuff smile at him. His hair is sticking up in a million directions and he's all in grey, grey joggers and a grey jumper with the yellow badger crest on the sleeve, worn old trainers, grey socks pulled up over his ankles. 

"Hiya," he says, waving like this is all totally standard. "Yeah -- Niall," he adds. "From--"

"I know," Louis grumbles. "What're you doing in my spot?"

"Oh," Niall says, looking around. Why is it that Hufflepuffs treat playing dumb like a state of mind? Louis makes to stick his wand in his pocket and then remembers he's wearing shorts, grumbles some more, lets his hand fall to his side anyway. "I dunno," Niall says, shrugging. He turns toward Louis properly, scoots over so his back is against the wall of the inside of the tower, pulls his knees up to his chest. "You, um -- you mentioned it last night, and my head was killing me when I woke up this morning and it just -- sounded nice, so--"

"I mentioned it? To you?"

Niall laughs, a little nervously, or at least Louis hopes that's what his imposing Slytherin pajama-clad presence is inspiring at this ungodly hour. "Yeah. You don't remember?" 

Louis continues grumbling indistinctly as he racks his brains and turns up empty. "Was I quite drunk," he asks, an objective question. It makes Horan laugh some more, which Louis has to admit he appreciates. 

"D'you wanna sit?" Niall asks, nodding to the space beside him. "Or -- d'you just want me to go?"

Louis sighs. "Oh, no," he says, waving his wand. "By all means, make yourself at home in my life, Niall Horan from Hufflepuff. Just what I need to cure my hangover."

Niall grins. "I might actually have something for that," he says, and he produces a napkin wrapped around a pile of bacon and buttered toast and a steaming stoneware mug, the kind of thing Hufflepuffs always get to steal from the kitchens. Louis moves toward him like the breakfast is magnetic and sits cross-legged on the cold floor a safe distance away.

He takes a sip from the mug first and chokes at once, spluttering and coughing into his sleeve. "Is that whiskey?!" 

"Hair of the dog," Niall shrugs, smiling sidelong at him. "It's a toddy. I'm Irish, y'know." 

Louis laughs. He's not sure whether it was an intentional prank, but Niall can have the benefit of the doubt. "I worked that out," he says, accepting some bacon and toast. "Did you get this from the Great Hall or do they just bring you this stuff in bed in your dormitory?"

"I wish," Niall says. "I had to go up to breakfast. We Puffs put our pants on one leg at a time like everyone else, I'm afraid."

"Shame."

Niall nods, watching him eat. "Sorry I stole your spot," he says. "You made it sound so nice."

"Yeah?" Louis asks with his mouth full. "What did I say?"

Niall twists his mouth, squinting. "Something about how you could already tell you were gonna wake up dying of alcohol poisoning and hating everyone in Slytherin this morning, and that whenever that happened you always escaped to the Astronomy Tower, where no one else ever goes and which only you have ever known about, to, like, regain your humanity in peace and solitude." Louis is grinning by the time he's done, and Niall goes a bit pink. "Does that sound about right?"

"Sounds like the kind of shit I'd tell a random Hufflepuff while drunk. Cheers." 

Niall inclines his head. Such an actual Hufflepuff thing, to take perfectly kindly to being called a rando. 

"You said it was easier to breathe up here than down in the dungeons," Niall adds after a moment, once Louis' guard is back down and his mouth is full of bacon and toast again and he has to take it in the softest part of his chest, knowing he told someone else that. A near-stranger, instead of someone like Zayn, who isn't here. He chews to cover the moment, and Niall lets it go. 

They stay up there in near-quiet until they've gone through the rest of Niall's breakfast, and finally Niall stands up. 

"I'll leave you to it, then," he says, quirking a smile. He looks warm, sunny, despite the grey of his clothes and the September chill in the misty air up here. Louis squints at him. 

"Thanks for the bacon," he says. "And the peace and solitude, or whatever I said." 

Niall nods. "See you around?" 

Louis shrugs, wonders if Niall knows that by his standards that's practically an enthusiastic yes. "Kay," Niall says softly, and Louis watches him go, listens to his feet receding down the long spiral stairwell. 

Once he knows for sure he's alone, he sighs and conjures a blanket for his bare legs like he always does when he's up here. Clearly managed not to mention that bit to Niall when they were drunk last night. It's the most embarrassing part of this whole dumb habit of his. He snuggles up with the rest of the toddy that Niall left behind, watches the fog recede from the treetops of the Forbidden Forest, listens to the far-off wails of unknown autumn creatures and thinks, _This is my last first Saturday morning._ He stays until it's become daytime and then goes down to lunch. 

*

It's not like he didn't _know_ Niall before, the way he assumes he's probably had a drink or done detention with at least half the kids at Hogwarts. Horan, for one, he's played in Quidditch plenty of times, had classes with, whatever. But Louis doesn't need real friends in other houses. He's a social guy, and he has his mates in Slytherin, Oli and Stan and Calvin.

And he had Zayn until this year, too, but Zayn never cared about school. When they were all complaining about their impending final round of NEWT classes as sixth-years, Zayn just decided to leave. He was different like that, as Slytherins go. That he could spin dropping out as a victory. He made Louis feel weak for being angry at him. 

Louis spent all summer writing him the same spiteful letter over and over, never sending it, gave up in the end. They haven't talked since the end of term last year. He doesn't even know where Zayn is. London, maybe, doing whatever he wants. Doing magic underage around his pure-blood relatives and somehow getting away with it, waiting to be 17. Spending money.

Zayn never knew that Louis is probably a half-blood, because Louis never told him. It's easier in Slytherin to let people assume you're pure, even after the war. Spare them the trouble of pretending it doesn't change how they see you. Louis doesn't know his dad, anyway. It might not be a lie, no matter what his mum's told him.

But Zayn was supposed to take all these stupid classes with him and now he's gone, which has left Louis with too many free periods to spend wondering why he's even here. 

He starts their first Monday in non-NEWT Transfiguration with the Gryffindors at arse o'clock in the morning. They're learning how to make two things out of one today -- complicated transmutation of equal matter shit that Louis has only a tenuous grasp on. They're meant to be dividing pieces of wood into snakes, then turning the snakes back into a single piece of wood. 

The trick turns out to be in the return, not the split, and Louis gave up ages ago and is messing about with Liam Payne from Gryffindor's station across the room instead. He makes the sticks on his table jump around every time he tries to pick them up, stifling a laugh as Payne chases them. 

Louis can see McGonagall mulling docking him points as she watches them, but she won't do it, even though she is Headmistress. Maybe because she is, actually. She loves Louis, and she knows he'll be able to deliver when she gets around to quizzing them. He's fairly sure he's her favorite Slytherin in years.

Payne figures it out eventually, rolls his eyes at Louis and flips him off, and Louis grins. Liam will let him get away with anything, too. 

McGonagall sends them off with hours of reading and a nine-inch theory essay for Wednesday and Louis goes back to Slytherin and naps until lunch, his books in a pile on the floor by his bed. Someone's already doing a Potions or Herbology project or something in the middle of the common room and the whole dormitory smells like leaves, like autumn. Something premonitory in it. Louis has strange nap dreams he doesn't remember when he wakes.

In the Great Hall, he gnaws on a chicken wing and listens to his sister rambling excitedly about how different second year is and how grown up and the spellbooks are three times as thick and whatnot. 

"That's the spirit, Lot," he says, shoving a platter of scalloped potatoes toward her. "Have some veg." 

She does, and then goes digging in her bag for a Defense assignment she wants his help with while Louis scans the Hufflepuff table for Horan's blond head. He finds it next to that of Harry Styles from Ravenclaw: Niall laughing while Harry tries intently to explain what looks to be a small fire he's started in his soup bowl. Harry's a freak for never sitting with his house. He's a freak in general. 

Niall spots him watching them, of course he does, smiles and lifts a hand. Louis waves back, smirking, tries not to be unnerved by the too-intense look he gets from Styles as a follow-up. A few of his housemates are giving him looks of their own for waving to a Hufflepuff, but Louis glares them off and goes back to his chicken. More perks of being a seventh-year. No one can fuck with you except your friends, and you barely even get in trouble if you have to punch them. And whatever -- Niall's a popular guy, one of those approachable weirdos with no enemies who even Louis is forced to acknowledge sometimes. 

Louis only has three NEWTs: Defense, Charms and Magical Creatures. He knows McGonagall wants him in her NEWT Transfig class but he's too lazy, and the only other non-NEWT class he's held onto is Potions, because Slughorn's a ridiculous laugh who will give him a good grade. He never took Divination or any of that other Ravenclaw bullshit, Runes, mathy stuff. Doesn't have the time.

But it's Charms that afternoon, a three-hour once-a-week block, and the class is smaller than he's expecting -- a lot of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, with Niall and somehow fifth-year Harry among them plus Liam Payne. Louis is the only Slytherin. Yet another class where Zayn left him to die alone.

Flitwick stands on the high stool behind his lectern and smiles down at all of them. It's one thing Louis loves about NEWTs, that though the material is harder the professors are that much more benevolent, just happy to have kids interested. 

"We've got a special project in this class this term," he says. "You may have noticed we're nearly finished with the castle repairs, the stones and such. Of course, it's been eight years since all the damage was done. Who can tell me why we've let it stretch as long as we have? Mr. Styles?"

"You've had to let the traces of dark magic, like, seep out," Harry says in his low, rumbling voice. Louis raises an eyebrow at him, looks around for someone to mutter with about how a fifth-year managed to get into this class in the first place, but he isn't good enough friends with any of these people. Niall catches his eye, can probably see the incredulity on Louis' face at Harry's whole schtick, and flashes him a grin.

"That's right," Flitwick is saying. "Some of our repairs are only now beginning to stick. And the bigger things, the work on the foundations, and the exterior, and on sealing the Room of Requirement -- we could only set those in motion and wait for the magic to do its work." 

Louis thinks of the seventh floor corridor, the blank stretch of wall that he's read used to open if you walked by it three times with a need in mind. It doesn't change anymore, but it does feel hot to the touch. Fiendfyre still burning somewhere behind it. Maybe forever.

"Now," Flitwick says, "it's nearly finished. Does anyone know how the castle's been warded for the past eight years?"

Silence, then Niall raises a hand, one finger up and the rest curled, an _I'll give it a shot_ kind of gesture. "Is it temporary?" he asks. "Like, we couldn't get the old wards to stick 'cause there was still dark magic inside?"

"Precisely."

"But now we can."

Flitwick smiles, nodding. "And this term, all of you will have the distinct honor of helping put those wards back up. Plus some new additions. For this..." he waves a hand. "Modern world."

This would normally be the moment for Louis to raise his hand and make a smartass remark about the assignment, make everyone laugh and wish they hated him more. But just now he can't think of anything to say. For years, all they've done is commune with the castle through stone and mortar, patching holes, putting statues back on their plinths. It's different, something this substantial. Even he gets that it's important. And the spark of pride at being the only Slytherin chosen for the task burns bright and hot inside him. 

They spend the rest of the class learning about the original wards, why the Founders chose them, how they were broken in the Battle of Hogwarts. By the end of it they're grouped off and working on diagrams, breaking down how the wards fit into each other, the order in which they should wrap around the castle. Flitwick's curious to see if they come up with anything new. 

They pair off by House mostly, but no one comes to sit by Louis. Somehow that Slytherin thing never shook, even as the dark magic seeped out, like Harry said, even with all that self-fulfilling prophecy shit a thing of the past. Louis isn't evil. He's just… discerning. And if he doesn't look out for himself, who will? 

"Doing alright?" 

Niall startles him from his sullen gazing around the room, sitting down across the table from Louis and spreading out his own half-started diagram. 

"Fine." Louis eyes him. 

"I can't work this bit out," Niall says, as though Louis asked. He points to the inside of the castle, which he's sketched in meticulous broad strokes with the fine tip of his quill. There are runes there, clustered at the center and in arcs around the inside of the wards.

"I don't speak rune," Louis says, trying to make _rune_ sound as much like _nerd_ as possible.

"That's okay," Niall says. "They're just to signify the dark stuff, like, this one's --" he glances up, sees Louis' skeptical gaze leveled at him across the table, and flushes a little. "Never mind. I just don't get how they mess up the wards from this direction. Like, the whole thing's -- outside-in, right? So if it's dark magic coming at them from the outside, I get that. They meet in the middle and, bang. But how does it even touch it coming the other way? Like, shouldn't they just not be able to? Like magnets, you know?" He bounces his fists off each other. "Do you get the theory behind that?"

"Magnets," is all Louis says. "Niall, did you know you're at magic school right now?"

Niall laughs. "Sorry. You'd think after six years I'd have kicked the habit. I'm Muggle-born."

"I know."

"Oh." He licks his lips, pulls them into a line as he looks at Louis. "So do you get it?" 

Louis does, actually. What he lacks in History knowledge -- he'd slept through five solid years of that class -- he makes up for in Defense. 

He sighs. "It's like a poison," he says. "Or, like, acid. Like it eats into the back of the ward and turns the whole thing bad. If it's coming at it from the outside if kind of cracks it, you know? But it won't totally evaporate if it cracks. They're designed to take a hit like that. But they never made them with evil from the inside in mind." 

Niall's nodding, watching Louis point it out with his wandtip on the parchment between them. "I guess that makes sense," he says. 

Flitwick's been eyeing them, and he totters over then. "That's very good, Mr. Tomlinson," he says. Louis shrugs. He and Flitwick are cool. "Do you know, that's actually one of the things we had in mind to add this year. What's say you write me up some thoughts about the inside-out ward and we can talk about them next time?" 

"Some… thoughts?"

"See if you can work out what the spell would look like," Flitwick says. "Work with Horan here. He's handy with those diagrams."

Niall grins, and Louis would curl his lip at him but Flitwick's still watching them.

"Is everyone doing this, or just me, Professor?" Louis asks, though secretly he's pleased, and he supposes Niall can tell, the way he's smiling at him. Pleased at least that he's being asked; less so that he's going to have to carry the weight for a damn Hufflepuff as a side effect. 

Flitwick smiles too. "I suppose that wouldn't be very fair, would it?" he says, and turns to the class. "Alright, everyone. Your homework is to start working in the groups you're in now to devise a ward you'd add to the set this year. Something original, or anything you can redesign that might be useful. We'll see if any of them are worth pursuing further next week." 

"What's your schedule like?" Niall asks as they leave. "Seventh year, you've probably got loads of free time, haven't you?" 

Louis shrugs. "I don't start homework the day it's assigned, anyway."

Niall laughs. "I mean, sure. We can work on it, like, Thursday."

"Thursday's Quidditch." 

"Oh, sick. Getting an early start this year, are you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Louis says, slanting his eyes at him. Niall flushes a little. 

"Sure," he says. "Um. Well, I'll find you, yeah? Check the Astronomy Tower?"

It's Louis' turn to flush then and he hates himself for it. "Whatever," he says, turning to go and waving Niall off. "We'll figure it out. I've gotta go do nothing now."

"Okay," Niall says. "See you at dinner!" And Louis lets him have the last word only out of the goodness of his heart.

*

They don't talk that night, and Louis has NEWT Defense the next day with the competent but forgettable safe-bet professor who's been teaching the class for years now, and the Ravenclaws. Louis asks one of them how Styles made it into Flitwick's upper-level Charms class and learns he wrote, like, a paper on wards for someone's class in his fourth year that was so good Flitwick decided to let him in. Harry is the least Ravenclaw-presenting Ravenclaw Louis has ever encountered, the way he talks like he's been stoned for years. But he supposes their Charms cohort is less of a class and more of a task force.

Defense is weird these days. In the beginning it was dark as hell, learning about all the things that might have served the kids better to know before the war. It was too late to find out about it then, but Louis supposes it must have helped the teachers cope, passing it on after the fact. Horcruxes, Inferi, worse. The stuff they've been told Harry Potter had to learn about in secret in order to do what he did. 

But that's worn off now, because the days when magic seemed designed for good versus evil are behind them. Even the fear's worn off, the whispers of a Death Eater resurgence, the remnants of the war in the castle. 

It's not as if it never happened, not as if it never might again, but right now feels purposeless, in a weird way. Louis sits in Defense breaking down the Cruciatus curse into its component parts to understand how to counter it, piece by piece, and wonders what it was like when people actually worried about this stuff in their day to day. When magic was like a moral imperative instead of just a neutral means of getting by. 

It's the kind of thing he used to talk to Zayn about, smoking joints under the Quidditch stands or sometimes beneath an unreliable camouflage charm by the lakeside. Louis is remembering that as he trudges out to NEWT Care of Magical Creatures before lunch, watching mist rise from the water in the autumn chill. He scowls, shrugs deeper into his jumper under his cloak. Maybe this year will get better once Quidditch starts. 

He finds a predictable group of Hufflepuffs at Hagrid's hut, Niall among them. He waves when he spots Louis and excuses himself from his friends immediately to come say hi. Louis watches him, trying not to care. 

"Alright?" Niall asks, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them.

"Well, I burned my mouth on my tea at brekkie and I've been deconstructing the Cruciatus with a bunch of Ravenclaws since 8 a.m., but." He shrugs. "Could be worse." 

Niall grins. "Most people just say they're fine." 

"Well, I'm not most people." Louis considers him. "Anything fascinating happen to you yet today?"

"Um, I almost set Liam Payne on fire in Potions class?"

It makes Louis laugh. "Good answer." 

Niall looks pleased, rocking on the balls of his feet. "How come you're, like, the only Slytherin seventh-year in all these NEWTs?"

Louis' gut twists. "My mates are all taking different ones from me. Except -- I was supposed to be in these with Zayn Malik, but... " And he's on the verge of saying a lot of things, before he remembers who he's talking to. He's not averse to turning on people who deserve it, but even he has to draw the line at starting that process through a Hufflepuff. It's bad enough with the Hogwarts rumor mill already abuzz about Zayn. Louis has spent plenty of time murmuring to his mates about it in the safety of the Slytherin common room, but he isn't quite ready to talk shit outside his house. 

"Oh," is all Niall says when Louis doesn't elaborate. "Sorry, mate." 

Louis shrugs irritably, then is surprised to feel that irritation abate rather than intensify as Niall continues standing by him, his presence unsure but still easy. Louis isn't accustomed to not scaring people off. 

They wind up working together for the rest of the block, even as Louis catches Niall's Puff mates throwing them confused looks while Niall murmurs to the Nifflers they're training, his hands gentle at their floppy black ears and long snout. They're supposed to get the Nifflers to run an agility course and ignore a bunch of shiny distractions by the end of the first part of the term. 

Louis isn't so sure that'll be possible as he sits on the cold ground with one of the creatures squirming in his lap, kneading at him with its spade-like paws. Niall's is licking his face while Niall laughs helplessly, getting slobber in his mouth. Across the class, another Niffler has absconded with someone's glasses and is gamboling around the lawn with them while a couple of Niall's friends give chase.

"You gotta let them imprint on you first," Niall tells him, "that way they'll listen to you later." 

"Sure," Louis says, grinning. The Niffler in his lap has gone to sleep. It's keeping him warm, though, and Hagrid doesn't give a shit, and he's got a nice view -- cute boy playing with a cuddly ball of fur in the fall air, his Hufflepuff scarf askew around his neck. Niall walks the Niffler in circles around Louis, quizzing him about its diet and making him laugh in spite of himself, until the bell rings out across the grounds for lunch. 

"What are you doing right now?" he asks Niall as they walk back to the castle, brushing Niffler fur off their cloaks. 

"Um, eating?" Niall says. "Why?"

"I'm done classes for the rest of the day. Was thinking I'd go smoke up under the bleachers or something." He doesn't say, _like I'd have done with Zayn if he was here._

Niall looks around. His mates up ahead are glancing back at them, and he looks torn. Louis smirks. "You can go on if you need to, I don't care. They clearly think I'm going to murder you."

"That Slytherin reputation," Niall says, but there's far too much laughter in his voice for Louis' liking.

"Come find out then," he says. "If you're so tough." 

"You're not gonna murder me," Niall sighs. "But… sure, I've only got History and it's not until two." 

"Alright then," Louis says, and veers off toward the Quidditch pitch. 

They spread out on their cloaks under the stands and cast a warming spell, and Niall watches with interest as Louis rolls a joint atop his Defense textbook.

"First time, lad?"

"I just never know what I'm smoking at Hogwarts," Niall says, laughing. "The Muggle-born kids just smoke weed, kids like you smoke asphodel… is that a mix? Looks like."

"Yeah. I'm cheap, I cut my stash with the Muggle shit my mate Stan brings back from home." He tips the box where he keeps his shit toward Niall so he can see -- a combination of purple and green buds, some of them shimmering slightly. "It gets the job done." 

They pass the blunt back and forth, not saying much. Louis is feeling slightly strange that he asked Niall in on what was for so long a private ritual between him and his ex-best mate. He'll be stoned soon and won't think about it anymore, but still. 

"This is cool," Niall says after a while. Louis hums, prompting. "Hanging out like this," Niall mumbles. The weed is softening his whole face, his eyes drooping, pink in his cheeks. Louis watches him until Niall starts to fidget. "What?"

"Nothing," Louis says. He takes the joint back and takes a hit, then another, tips his head back and blows the purplish smoke in broken rings up toward the underside of the seats above them. "Thanks for coming with," he says. "I never really did this with anyone but Zayn. Not like I don't smoke with my mates, but. This, specifically." He shrugs. "I guess it'll get easier," he mumbles. He can't seem to stop talking now he's started. "We've only been back, like, a week."

"How's he doing?" Niall asks, pinching the joint out of Louis' fingers. "I never talked to him much. He seemed cool."

"I don't know." Louis laughs, but it's dark, no humor in it. "I don't know how he's doing. I haven't spoken to him since June. That's a laugh, innit?" 

"Shit," Niall mumbles. 

"Yeah, man," Louis breathes. "What a fucking mess." He flops down onto his cloak and loosens his tie -- their warming spell is working overdrive. Niall stubs the spent roach of the joint out in the wet grass and it sparks gently. 

"Did you and he, like…" Niall starts, unsure. Louis raises an eyebrow at him. "Ever have, like, a thing?"

"Merlin, no." Louis wrinkles his nose. "Zayn's -- no. Wasn't like that." 

"Alright," Niall says, smiling. "You know how people are at this school with their rumors."

Louis shrugs. He does know, and also knows he's hooked up with plenty of girls and boys at Hogwarts without ever properly coming out as anything. He figures he's more mysterious that way. He hasn't ever heard much about Niall, but Hufflepuffs tend to keep a low profile. 

"I can't really imagine wanting to leave," Niall says after a while, edging back into the silence. "Is he pure-blood?"

"Yeah."

"I guess that's it, then. Like, for me being Muggle-born, this is just -- it just changed everything, y'know. When I got my letter, like." He shakes his head, smiling hazily. "I've always just felt really lucky. I'm, like, I'd stay forever if they'd let me. Be 22 and still in seventh year."

Louis huffs a laugh too. "I know. I don't want to fuckin' graduate, man." 

He's expecting the token affirmation from Niall, _I'm sure you'll be fine_ , whatever, but it doesn't come. Instead Niall considers him, for so long that Louis starts to feel it under his skin like warmth. Then he says, "What are you going to do?"

That makes Louis shiver, and he looks away. "I dunno," he says. "I'm not good enough to go pro at Quidditch and the Auror office is a sham these days. My mum wants me to be a Healer, but…" He flops his hands like a shrug.

"What do your NEWTs line you up for? Is it just -- our two and, was it Defense?"

"Yeah, good memory, weirdo," Louis says, grinning at him. "Um, I dunno. Teaching, maybe. Little kids, like. Baby magic." 

"That'd be nice," Niall mumbles. "We haven't had our career meetings yet. I'm trying not to think about it."

"Merlin, you make me feel old," Louis says, scrubbing at his eyes. "C'mon, Puff, I'm starving, let's go get lunch."

It's only a little awkward when they split off to their respective house tables in the Great Hall, with plans, instigated by Niall and grudgingly agreed to by Louis, to get together and work on their ward in the library the next night. 

Louis stays in his head through lunch, letting his buzz wear off, then goes back to the dorms to bother underclassmen and ignore McGonagall's essay due the next morning, opting instead to play Exploding Snap with Oli and work on plans for Thursday Quidditch practice all afternoon. 

Louis plays Beater and has been Slytherin's captain the past three years, and in all that time they haven't won a Cup. But this year he's finally got his dream lineup, kids he's bled with by now, who he handpicked and molded himself. It's his last chance to make a run at it.

He feels half-stupid for the importance he places on that, staring down the end of his Hogwarts career. Like he should be worrying about things with weight, like the ward, or things that'll take him somewhere after graduation. But instead of being over Quidditch he's deeper in it than ever. Something about Slytherin, maybe, the pressure there to bring home trophies. 

He remembers being younger, not yet all the way taken under by the Slytherin gestalt but wanting to be -- to be clever enough, driven enough, quick enough on the draw. When he looks back on it now he isn't sure if his house changed him or if this is the person he was all along. As a first-year, when the Sorting Hat had asked him Gryffindor or Slytherin, he'd just thought to it that those kids in green and silver seemed like the coolest witches and wizards in the Great Hall. And then he'd gone and sat down next to a skinny, quiet fellow firstie named Zayn. 

Slytherin already feels different without him, like something Louis has to live up to again. He hadn't realized until he left that the best way he knew how to do this house was with Zayn. 

Quidditch, though, is one thing that hasn't changed in Zayn's absence. Another is Louis crashing through nine inches of Transfiguration theory in the firelit common room at one in the morning, ink all over his hands and malice in his heart. 

*

He takes a long shower after his first non-NEWT Potions disaster the next afternoon -- Slughorn loves him but Louis is absolute garbage at Potions and nearly always manages to blow something up -- then wanders up to dinner late and finally to the library, where he finds Niall already spread out at a table in the back of the Hogwarts history section. He's in shirtsleeves, his thin wrists at angles as he walks his fingers across his diagrams from Flitwick's class, measuring something. His black and yellow tie is half-undone.

"Working hard or hardly working, lad?" Louis asks, sitting down opposite him. Niall looks up and grins. 

"Not sure, to be honest. I still haven't figured out if this chart's worth shit." Niall sniffs. "You smell… a bit burnt."

"My natural musk," Louis sighs. "But actually I had Potions today. I tried to wash, but some of that shit just does not come out."

Niall nods, laughing. "That explains it. Are you in NEWT?" 

"Merlin, no. Are you?"

"Yeah. It's a nightmare, I'm one of the only Puffs. We'll see how long it lasts." 

Louis starts unloading books at random from his bag, looking around. "I haven't been in here in a while," he says. 

Niall laughs. "We've been back, like, a week."

"I mean from last year. I was banned for the last, like, two months of term. Fucking nuisance trying to get ready for my first round of NEWTs with that going on, I'll tell you."

"You were banned? What'd you do?"

"Pince caught me hooking up in the stacks." 

Niall's eyebrows, already raised, shoot higher up his forehead. "With who?"

Louis considers him. "Declan O'Connor from Ravenclaw," he says, and manages to keep looking Niall in the eye. It's not like it's a secret, but still. 

Niall starts to smirk. "Cool," he says, and Louis is fascinated to see he flushes a little. "He's hot."

"Yeah," Louis says, tilting his head in mild surprise. "Bit of a dick, though." 

"I've heard."

Louis is wondering if that was his somewhat unsubtle way of letting him know, of making himself available. He's never hooked up with a Hufflepuff, wasn't aware they had mating rituals to speak of. Seventh year, though. Gotta keep checking things off the Hogwarts bucket list. 

Niall's just looking at him, and Louis could just up and ask, could make him squirm, but he decides against it. It's only the first week back. "Anyway," he says pointedly, spreading his hands on the table. "Schoolwork."

Niall grins down at his papers. "Right." 

He's relieved when Louis tells him fuck no, they aren't designing the spell from scratch -- "what am I, a Ravenclaw? We're stealing someone else's boring work and making it better" -- and they spend the rest of the evening digging through spellbooks, trying to find a suitable base. Louis doesn't actually find this to be all that morally objectionable, and if Niall does for some stupid Hufflepuff reason he hasn't said anything. 

Either way, Louis is being punished enough with the closest read he's ever done of _Hogwarts, A History_ , the wards section in particular. Niall, for his part, says he ate it up cover to cover when he was a first-year. 

"I don't really get why we can't just take a standard ward and, like, flip it," Niall says after a while, his brow furrowed as he puts aside one dusty encyclopedia from the stacks and picks up another. "Can't we just mirror it or something? Back 'em up to each other?"

"But then it gets unstable between where they're next to each other," Louis points out. "And I think the stuff the outer wards are protecting, like, acts different." He squints at the minuscule print in the book he's currently failing to absorb. "I mean, like, if you cast a curse on the ward while the ward's already protecting you… I don't know. I feel like part of the problem is they weren't meant to deal with that. Kind of incredibly stupid, if you think about it."

"It's not like anyone ever did it," Niall says. "The old wards got broken from the outside, they've just had trouble rebuilding them 'cause of all the shit that got left behind."

"Plenty of the war happened from the inside out, though," Louis mumbles. "I mean, what happened to Dumbledore. And, like... " he shrugs. "You know they basically made all the Slytherins leave before the Battle of Hogwarts? I've never understood that. Why'd they keep the house at all after the war, if we were such a threat? No wonder they want to redo the wards like this." He stares down at his books, the dawning understanding crawling in him. "They didn't stamp us out when they should have."

"You're full of shit," Niall says amicably. Louis looks up. "It could come from anywhere. It's not just 'cause there's still a Slytherin House that they want to do it. Flitwick's asking the only Slytherin in his class to write the damn spell."

Louis knows he has a point, but he's not used to being called out in the midst of a strop. 

"Well -- still," he says. "It is weird, you know. Being a Slytherin in this day and age." 

"I'm sure."

"It is!"

"I'm not arguing with you," Niall says, and he catches Louis' eye. "I don't care what house anyone's in, but I know some people still do. I know you still do." 

Louis is more worked up than he'd realized, his heart thumping in his chest. He holds Niall's gaze and feels it settle. "We just… you know, we have to be twice as proud and twice as humble at the same time," he says after a moment. "All that self-fulfilling prophecy bullshit. I don't know one person in my house who's gonna turn out Dark. Merlin, as if that's even a thing anymore." 

Niall smiles a little. "Makes you wonder what the point is, sometimes," he says. 

"I know."

"Like, I came into all this after, y'know. People like you -- you grew up with it, at least. You knew about the war before you got here. You were a kid, right?" 

Louis nods. "I'm not secretly 40, if that's what you're asking." 

"Right," Niall says, smiling, "but I didn't -- I mean, I had to learn all of it. Who to hate, and... I don't know. It never really made a lot of sense to me. I guess that's why I am how I am."

"A sweet Hufflepuff fool," Louis simpers, fluttering his eyelashes at him. 

Niall grins. "Something like that." 

Pince comes and tells them to shut the fuck up after that, even as hidden in the stacks as they are, and when she sees it's Louis she almost kicks them out on the spot. Niall talks her down while Louis stifles his laughter behind a book, and then they have to scramble to pick a few likely base spells before the library closes or Louis gets detention, whichever comes first. 

"What're you doing Friday?" Niall asks as they come to a halt in the corridor on their way out -- the dungeons down to the left, the kitchens and Hufflepuff to the right. 

Louis snorts. "Not working on this." 

"Shut up. We're having a bonfire behind Greenhouse Four. 'Round 10 o'clock or so. You should come. Bring your friends." 

"Oh, sick," Louis says. "I hadn't heard."

"Hufflepuff parties don't always make the rounds like yours and the Gryffindors' do," Niall says, grinning like this is no skin off his back. "Feel free to spread the word, though." 

"Yeah, I will."

"So I'll see you?"

Louis tries to look ambivalent as he says, "Dunno, maybe," but Niall seems inordinately pleased. "You're so embarrassing," Louis tells him, and he's dismayed to hear the fondness in his own voice. For a _Hufflepuff._

"Cheers," Niall says, smiling big. "See you."

"Yeah, yeah," Louis says, shaking his head, but he's smiling too as he heads down toward the waiting chill of Slytherin. 

*

Louis only gets his mates to come with him to the bonfire by agreeing that if it turns out to suck and there's no one good there, they'll prank it somehow and bail, make the fire smell like farts or transfigure the wood all into rampaging salamanders or something. So they bundle up in green and silver and Louis tucks his flask, charmed to hold three times as much whiskey as it should, and a bunch of spliffs in pack of Stan's cigarettes into his pockets and they troop out of the dungeons and through a back courtyard onto the grounds. 

The Puffs have either reasoned with Filch to get him to allow this or set up some kind of diversion for him elsewhere in the castle, because he's nowhere to be seen. But there are plenty of people standing around the roaring fire in the dark behind the greenhouses when Louis' crew gets there. A couple dozen Hufflepuffs, the requisite Ravenclaw sitting on a log reading a book with jittery knees and a few more entertaining a knot of stoned Gryffindors with a metaphysical debate. Even a handful of Slytherins from lower grades, apparently there of their own volition and looking like they're trying not to have too much fun. 

Oli and Stan are already buzzed from shots in the common room and they splinter off quickly, looking for the source of the canned Muggle beer a few of the Hufflepuffs are holding, leaving Louis to spin in a circle in search of someone he both knows and is interested in talking to. 

He winds up getting intercepted by a hot but awful Gryffindor sixth-year who's been trying to get him to fuck her for ages now, Samantha or Sabrina or something. She talks at him while he nurses his flask, smiling blandly at her and asking stupid questions instead of making real conversation. He's decides it's too early to try to make this happen, that maybe he'll circle back to her later in the night, and he's trying to chart an escape route when he hears a snatch of acoustic guitar on the other side of the fire, and then the bright familiar sound of a boy laughing. 

"Hey -- excuse me just one second," he says, touching the Gryffindor strategically on the arm and smiling at her, and then he bolts away through the crowd and finally ends up at Niall, surrounded by people, guitar in his lap. 

"Hey, Louis!" Niall waves. The people he has clustered around him look up, confused. It's a mix of every house, a range of years.

He finds himself sitting down on Niall's left anyway, a seat on the bench they've dragged out there hastily vacated by a Hufflepuff third-year who's too damn young to be at this party anyway. She stares at Louis with a little trepidation, and he gives her a smile, all teeth in the firelight. 

"Scaring the children?" Niall asks, slinging a warm arm around Louis' shoulders.

"You know me," Louis says. "Hopefully she doesn't know my sister, 'cause my sister'll tell my mum." 

"What year's she?"

"Just second. Her name's Lottie, she's Slytherin too." 

"Oh, I've seen her. That little blonde one you sit with at dinner sometimes."

"Observant, Puff." Louis tips his flask up to his mouth again. "It's good, this. Good fire. Did you get permission?"

"Yeah, of course." 

"Niall, I'm joking. You actually got permission? To have a party?"

"Oh." Niall laughs. He's pink-cheeked from the heat of the fire, the gleam of his eyes suggesting he's already a few beers deep. "Yeah. Well, Sprout thinks we aren't, like, gonna drink. She's easy like that."

"Hufflepuffs," Louis mutters, shaking his head.

"I don't think the teachers care that much," Niall says. "Worse shit we could be getting up to than, like, interhouse bonding and practicing our _incendios_." 

"True." Louis levels his wand at the fire and gives it a little flick. The tips of the flames turn green, shooting skyward, emerald sparks into the night. 

"Cool," Niall says. "How d'you do that?"

"I don't have a verbal spell for it," Louis says. He pokes the flames around from a distance, listening to people _ooh_ and _ahh_. "Just something we came up with while we were stoned." 

Niall smiles, watching the green seep into the fire and stain the embers. "You're good at this," he says.

"What, fucking about with the fire?"

"Nah, just -- magic."

"Bit broad, innit."

"You've got a good, like, intuition about it," Niall says. "You think of stuff I don't."

"'Cause I grew up with it," Louis says. "I can't look at it the way you do, though. Goes both ways."

"You think?"

"I don't do empty compliments, Niall." 

Niall smiles down at the guitar in his lap. 

"I feel a bit jaded sometimes," Louis muses softly, then remembers again who he's talking to, where he is, and pulls back. "Anyway. You gonna play us something or is that for me to use for kindling?" 

So Niall plays, mainly Muggle classics that Louis either doesn't know or knows via Stan. There's some weird shit thrown in, possibly original or else a brand of Wizard indie Louis doesn't pay attention to. Maybe it's Irish. The Hufflepuffs around them all break into song and Louis has to roll his eyes a little as Niall serenades him. 

He takes a moment to marvel that he's here. A year ago he and Zayn wouldn't have been caught dead at this kind of thing, or they would've been on the sidelines talking shit about it. It hurts and Louis isn't sure why, if he's missing that or sad for having missed this all those years. Maybe both.

"How're you doing that without a capo?" he asks Niall after a while, watching him play David Bowie way up on the neck of the guitar. 

"There's a charm on it," Niall says, poking his tongue between his teeth in concentration as he picks out Space Oddity. "Invisible capo. I can move it around while I play." He taps his temple. 

"Sick," Louis says, grinning. "Stoner magic."

"You'd know all about that."

"Oh, I'm the master, lad." 

Niall lapses into strumming chords, smiling up at Louis. "What was the dumbest thing you ever tried to do with magic while you were stoned?"

"Easy," Louis says. "Tried to fly."

"Like without a broom?" 

"Yeah." Louis grins. "Charmed my shoes and jumped out of a third-story window." 

"Where?"

"The Charms corridor. That window next to the statue of the two-faced witch at the end."

"I heard about this." Niall's laughing. "That was you? You broke your leg."

"I did indeed." Louis smiles serenely. "Hey, didn't work, but any press is good press, right?"

"God, you must be the guy in at least half the ridiculous Hogwarts legends they tell all the freshers."

"Try me," Louis says, preening a bit under the attention. This is why he does it, of course, for the sake of the story. If there's one thing his house has beaten into him it's to find a way to live on at Hogwarts after you graduate, whatever the cost. Reclaim the Slytherin name.

Niall is thinking. "When Liam Payne was accepting the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor when we were fourth-years and he started singing opera and couldn't stop?"

"Obviously me. He knows, too. We have an understanding."

"I bet you do," Niall laughs. "What about when someone turned the Charms corridor into a swamp?"

"That was like fifteen years ago, Niall. That was the Weasley twins."

"Oh, right. Um… oh, when there were all those screaming Mandrakes hidden in the Gryffindor common room when they got back from Christmas a few years ago?"

Louis grins. "Might've had a hand in that, yeah."

" _Ledge_ ," Niall breathes. Louis takes a pull of his flask, feeling warm as he stares into the fire. "Shit," he hears Niall say, "hey, Harry, where'd you come from?"

Louis looks around. Harry Styles is perched at the end of Niall's bench, listening. "Been here the whole time," Harry says slowly, his eyes wide and glassy. Louis smirks at him.

"You havin' a good time, mate?"

"Yeah," Harry says musingly, a wobbly grin spreading over his face. "I'm on mushrooms, so."

Louis snorts. "Fifth year, man. You crazy kids."

Harry smiles blissfully. "You know," he says to Louis, "you're pretty nice for a Slytherin."

"Not to you," Louis snaps. It makes Niall laugh, and Louis shifts closer to him, not sure how to give everyone the impression that just because he's apparently here to hang out with one particular Hufflepuff doesn't mean he gives a shit about the rest of them. Harry just shrugs. 

"You want some, then, Nialler?" he asks. He pulls a little canvas bag out of his pocket. 

"What's that, then?" 

"Shrooms, mate."

"Oh." Niall looks at Louis. "You up for it?"

Which is how they end up lying on the ground beside the dying fire with most of the rest of the party either tripping too or long since filtered back to the warmth of the dorms, laughing their asses off, bodies angled together.

"Trust the Ravenclaw to take the party to the next level," Louis rambles, sketching nonsense runes in the air above them with his wand. Streams of stars and silvery wisps. "The level where everyone's lying around leaking and I can't shut up."

"I am leaking," Niall laughs. It's not crying, exactly, what the shrooms are making him do. Just water at the corners of his eyes. "I know. You've said that about a dozen times."

"Have not."

"You're talking in circles, mate."

"Shut up." Louis draws it in the space over their bodies, angled close together on the cold earth. _shut up Niall !_ Niall laughs harder than ever, throwing an arm over his eyes. 

"Looks like a shitty Patronus," Louis mumbles. "I don't even know what spell I'm using."

"I think it's so cool that you can just do magic like that," Niall says, rubbing his eyes. He lifts his wand and copies Louis' movements, but no stars come out. Louis feels like he can see them anyway, but it might be the drugs. 

"It's all about intent," Louis says softly. He can feel it as he's doing it, the knowledge that this silvery stuff is going to come out of his wand if he moves it like this, the way it's going to hang there then dissipate, manifested from the core of him out his arm through his wand and into reality. "Did you always know you could do this?" he asks Niall, rolling his head to look at them. They're really close together. Niall blinks at him for a moment, then looks up again. 

"I reckon I didn't know until I knew," he says. "Like -- first time I ever did magic, it was like it had been in there waiting all my life." He huffs a laugh. "Big shit for an 11-year-old, I don't mind telling you. It felt good. It felt like -- relief, I guess? Like -- everything was gonna be okay now. It just really felt good." 

Louis blinks at him, his eyelids heavy. Now that he's shut the fuck up he just wants to listen to Niall talk.

Niall glances at him. "Isn't your mate Stan Muggle-born?"

"Yeah," Louis shrugs. "We never really talked about it like this."

"On shrooms." Niall giggles a little, and Louis grins back at him, draws a loop-de-loop in silver smoke in the air. "Hey," Niall says, "can you do your Patronus? Wanna see."

"What, right now?"

"When else? Perfect time for it, innit?" Niall raises his wand and Louis feels him draw a breath and let it out, then draw another. " _Expecto patronum_ ," he murmurs, and the silvery shape of a wolf bursts out of his wandtip, leaps in an arc to the ground and does a lap around the fire before coming back to stand by them, expectant. 

Louis stares at it, breath caught in his throat. He's seen countless Patronuses in his life and it still never gets old, someone's he's never seen before, that first moment of a good cast. And Niall's is good -- the wolf is fully-formed, skinny but not that mean-looking, its silver eyes curious as it watches them. It runs in a fretful little circle then sits again, tongue out as it pants silently, tail swishing and ears swiveling every which way. 

"Wicked," Louis breathes. Niall holds his hand out and the Patronus sniffs, then steps over them carefully, makes its rounds around the fire. Louis thinks he can feel when it just barely touches him with a paw against his side, like warmth but different, something nerve-deep. It makes him gasp quietly, and Niall looks around.

"Your turn," he says. 

Louis chews on his lower lip. "What's your memory?" he asks.

"Eh?"

"What'd you think about?"

"Day I got my letter," Niall says, easily. Louis' heart hurts. "Go on. Let's have it."

He tries. He thinks of when Lottie got sorted into Slytherin, how proud he was, but he can already tell that's not going to do it when he starts to try to cast the spell. He scrolls through day after perfect day of fucking off with Zayn, Quidditch victories, summer nights in the garden in Donny conjuring fairy lights for his little sisters. But when he says the words, there's only mist.

"Chalk it up to being high," he says, throat tight. "It's meant to be a fox. I can get it, usually, I just--"

"It's alright, man," Niall says. His eyes are bright like the wolf's, and they're both looking at Louis. "Sorry, I didn't -- don't worry about it."

The wolf snuffles at them a moment longer and then evaporates. Niall's body relaxes. 

"Wild, that," he says. "Tripping with your Patronus. That felt crazy."

Louis sighs, losing himself in the sparks jumping from the low fire. Niall's started laughing again, and it makes Louis start to grin, feeling Niall's shoulder shake next to his. Pulls himself out of it. 

"Fuck, mate, we've gotta work on our ward tomorrow," he says. "I can't let Payne's group beat us."

"S'not a competition."

"Is too, Flitwick said he's picking the best ones to move on with." 

"Was Harry in Liam's group?"

"Ugh, probably. Where's he got off to?"

"He's a magical shrooms fairy," Niall says, still laughing. "Arrives, distributes drugs, disappears into the night."

"I didn't see Liam," Louis mumbles. "Was he here?"

"He's got that girlfriend Sophia in Ravenclaw. Probably date night."

"Merlin. I swear every Gryffindor I know is gonna be married with children by, like, two years after graduation."

Niall snorts, and Louis tilts his eyes at him, grinning blearily. Niall laughs more than anyone he's ever met before. "What?" he asks finally. He's leaking again, wet at the corners of his eyes.

Niall's eyes are wet too, sparkling as he laughs. "I don't know," he says, "I keep thinking about kissing you." And he goes on laughing like it's the funniest thing in the world.

Louis looks at him, though, thinking about that, and he rolls on his side, into Niall's space. "Yeah?" he goes, and he knows somewhere in his tripped-out brain that he'd been trying for alluring but it comes out on a laugh. Niall licks his lips, quieting, half a smile still on his face.

"I mean," he murmurs. His eyes drop to Louis' mouth. 

Someone responsible chooses that moment to come and smother the fire with sand from their wand. Louis flops onto his back, away from Niall, staring up at the sudden clarity of the night sky. He can feel Niall sitting up beside him, and he lets his breath out quietly. 

"Fuck," Niall mumbles, "it's late, Jesus." 

Louis could try to come back to Hufflepuff with him, could bring him to Slytherin, could take him somewhere else, but his head spins when he stands up and he can barely feel his legs, still rolling on the shrooms. So he lets it go, doesn't ask, and Niall's eyes are on him in the dark but he doesn't either, and they weave across the starlit grounds with the last survivors of the party in a big intoxicated knot. 

Louis is the only Slytherin left and the way down to the dungeons is lonely, but he's nearly sleepwalking, doesn't remember getting to his own bed once he's in it. He falls asleep as somewhere far above them, the clock in the Entrance Hall tolls five in the morning. 

*

Niall's only 15 minutes late to their agreed-upon Charms date in the library the next afternoon, and he turns up with mud on his face, out of breath, smelling like sweat and dry grass. 

"Rough morning?" Louis asks, grinning. 

"Quidditch practice," Niall says, dropping with a huff into the chair opposite Louis and running a hand through his hair.

"Why didn't you say something? We could've pushed, I don't care."

"I forgot." Niall grins. "Surprised you remembered this."

It makes Louis yawn. "Yeah, me too. I woke up like an hour ago. Last night's a fucking blur."

"Yeah." Niall's face flickers a little as he says it. "Same for me." Louis waits for more, but it doesn't come, which probably means he'd rather not know.

"Alright." He pushes his books toward Niall and gets his wand out. "What are we doing?"

What they're doing is cutting up pieces of the base spells they've picked and weaving them together to make something new. It turns out Niall's good at this bit, scribbling Latin and Greek and Sanskrit syllables down next to the runes in his notebook for reasons Louis doesn't understand. Louis is good with the idea of theory, but not so much the execution. The feel but not the science of magic. 

It seems like Niall's done well with that being Muggle-born. He's worked out the details of that which Louis has always accepted as incomprehensible, the way you know in general how far away the stars are and that somehow you came from them, but that's never really going to gain purchase on reality. It just is. Magic's like that. Something Louis believes in without wanting to know all the whys and hows. 

But it's Niall being good at figuring those out that saves them, in the end. They cast the ward around him right there in the library, and it holds its shape and goes invisible like it should, plus Niall doesn't drop dead on the spot or anything, so that's good news. But it shivers dangerously when Niall casts the undoing spell from inside it, the closest thing to Dark anti-ward magic they could find that Niall was comfortable doing. (Louis, for his part, is ready to go whole-ham Restricted Section and suspects he could convince Niall to sneak in there with him too, but Pince is already spying on them.) 

Louis watches, frowning, as a fracture appears in the ward down Niall's front, like he's encased in a big glowing umbrella. Then the whole thing shakes apart with a noise like leaves falling, and the pieces drop to the floor in a mess of thready white magic stuff, dissipating. 

"I know what we're missing," Niall says. "It just needs to heal itself." 

"Clever, Niall," Louis says, impressed. "It's weird, the outside ones do that too, but --"

"They're like shatterproof glass," Niall says. He looks up and grins. "Sorry, more Muggle metaphors. It's that glass that cracks without breaking. Like they put in the windshield of a car."

Louis stares at him, deadpan, but Niall presses on. "No, but that's how the outer wards are, whereas this one's like -- like a sealant, you know? It's gotta just gel right back into itself to protect the ward from the inside. I think that's what we forgot, we were thinking of it too much like the outside ones."

"More like _protego,_ " Louis says. 

"Yeah," Niall says. He's flushed, fingers trembling on the pages of his notebook. 

"You alright, lad? Ward got you worked up?"

"I just like this stuff," Niall says, grinning. "This is cool. Doing something that's gonna matter."

It makes Louis smile before he realizes he's doing it, watching Niall with the ratty end of his quill in his mouth, trying to figure out how to fine-tune spell they've already written. He chalks it up to ownership, knowing when they leave this ward in the castle it'll be with his name on it, a Slytherin's name. Well. And Niall's.

"Can you find me a healing spell? Something for cuts?" Niall asks. "Not like _episky_ , like -- for skin." 

Louis nods and dives back into his spellbooks, glad of a reason to look away from Niall all pink with the thrill of discovery and hard work, a smudge of dirt on the end of his nose. He's kind of mesmerizing like that. Sunnier than most of the people Louis spends his days with. He'd never admit it, but it's nice to be around him. 

Niall uses his mysterious rune formula to retool the ward with more _protego,_ and the healing spell, and this time when Niall says the undoing spell from inside, it wobbles like jelly but doesn't break.

"Try to poke a hole in it," Louis says. "Try _diffindo._ " 

Niall murmurs the spell and slashes at the inside of the ward with his wand. Louis can see a gash appear, then seal only partway, its edges glowing pink.

"C'mon," Niall mumbles, looking disappointed. 

"Yeah, but at least the whole thing's not exploding this time," Louis says. "And look." He tries an _incendio_ at the hole to see if he can get through, but the fire spreads over the outside of the ward and hisses out in a second.

"Louis," Niall says sharply, but he's laughing. "I can feel the heat, though."

"Better than feeling the fire," Louis singsongs, grinning. "It's good enough for Monday, mate. It's brilliant." 

Niall can unlock the ward to step out of it, but it seals behind him, still visible by the way it distorts the air within it just slightly.

"We've become too powerful," Louis intones, smirking at Niall as he frowns at the ward beside him.

They aren't sure what to do with it in the end, so they leave it to see if it falls apart overnight. If Pince or Filch gets to it first they can just have Flitwick ask them how they managed it, problem solved. 

They're late to dinner, the Slytherin table almost empty, and it only gives Louis a moment's pause when Niall sits beside him like it's nothing and starts digging into a dish of mashed potatoes. 

A few other Slytherins at the table glance down at them for a second, but either they're scared of Louis or they don't care, and so Louis lets Niall stay, lets him pass the lamb and ramble on about all the work he has to do for McGonagall's NEWT class tomorrow. He lets Niall from Hufflepuff into his Slytherin life and wonders for the first time if he's the only one who gives a shit. 

*

They smash it with their spell in Charms on Monday, miles beyond anyone else including and especially Payne's team ("Acceptable for effort," Louis tells him on their way out, while Niall grins apologetically) and the term starts to move far too quickly for Louis' liking from there. Their ward isn't just theirs anymore, it's a class project, every inch of it worked over in their Monday block until it's airtight and they've taught everyone the theory of it better than they understand _alohomora_. 

The first Quidditch game of the year is coming up in mid-October, too, Slytherin vs. Ravenclaw, and Louis stumbles back to the dorms bruised and hoarse from shouting formations and telling his team off for slacking and backsassing him. His Seeker, Lauren, is fantastic in particular but has a fucking mouth on her; she's a little too much like Louis himself for Louis' liking, actually. 

He's too tired for anything but sleep most nights, just trying to keep his head above water. Hanging out with Niall reminds him of the marked difference between sixth and seventh year: Niall is making his first entrance into higher-level everything, whereas Louis' teachers are checking if he's ready to do it all on his own. It's barely October and it all has the air of finality already, and Louis is exhausted by it. 

Respite comes on the first Hogsmeade weekend, which arrives with a surprise early snow and piercing sunlight. It takes Louis and his mates ages to get down there, shoving each other into drifts along the path and enchanting snowballs to annoy the upper-grade Slytherin girls, who are gliding down to the village in an aloof pack with their noses turned up at the boys as per usual. Every store is crammed when they step onto the High Street and Louis takes another moment, like he does about once a day at this point -- to feel Zayn's absence, and to realize this is the last time he'll ever have this exact ritual, the first weekend trip, again. 

They spike their Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks and toast to the beginning of the end, tumble across the street to Honeydukes and go tipsy shopping for sweets that stopped being a novelty when they were 14, things that are almost nostalgic now -- cockroach clusters and pepper imps. Louis splurges on new Beaters' gloves at Sprintwiches, and reliable Stan drags him away from the newest Firebolt model, telling him to wait for Christmas as if that's something his mum's going to give him. Louis has been riding a third-generation Firebolt for years, but even though it's outdated it's still a faster broom than most in the right hands, which Louis prides his own on being. 

It reminds him, though, that he needs to owl his mum, so he splits off and heads that direction. His head is starting to hurt from all the sugar and the whiskey and the sun on the October snow and he thinks he might just go back up to the castle after this, take a nap, avoid some work. 

He finds Niall among the post office boxes, counting Sickles from one palm to the other. 

"Alright, Puff?" he says, baring his teeth in a grin. A familiar nickname now. Niall startles, looking up. 

"Oh, hey," he says, smiling. "What're you doing here?"

"Well," Louis says, "I need to send my mum a letter, and my owl bailed on me last year, so here I am in the post office like a commoner." 

Niall laughs. "Does that make me a commoner as well, then?"

Louis shrugs. "I don't make the rules."

"Your owl bailed on you? I thought they weren't supposed to do that."

"Yeah, my owl and I didn't get on very well," Louis says, staring around. "What're you up to?"

"Oh, I'm buying sealing wax and owl treats and stuff," Niall says. "I've got Niamh, she's one of those too-big tawnies that always stares at you like they can read your mind. You can borrow her, if you like. For your mum. Where's she live?"

"Doncaster." 

"Yeah, I mean, no problem wherever she has to go, innit." Niall's rambling a bit, cheeks pink in the cold, and Louis smirks at him. "But -- Niamh's good, she'll get the job done, promise."

"Yeah, sold," Louis drawls. "She your only familiar?" It's an antiquated word, and he pronounces it with a sarcasm that Niall seems to miss. 

"I've got a rat," he says. "Derby. He doesn't come out much, 's why you haven't met him. He likes a quiet life. How about you?"

Louis shakes his head, rubbing his chilly hands together. "I'm a lone wolf, mate," he says. "You going back up now? Can we swing by your bird?"

They walk up to the castle together, Louis with a spliff hanging out of his mouth like he owns the place, their feet slushing about in the already-melting snow. The hem of Louis' cloak is soaked through by the time they arrive in the Entrance Hall, and Niall looks at him, unsure.

"Lead on," Louis says, shooing him up. 

The Owlery always smells terrible, close and warm at any time of year with hundreds of piercing yellow eyes blinking from every direction. Louis hovers in the doorway, feeling the barn stink set in his damp clothes, while Niall takes a step inside. He gives a loud whistle, and a truly gigantic bird soars down from an upper rafter and alights on his shoulder, causing his knees to buckle slightly. 

"That seems like overkill," Louis comments, keeping his eyes on Niamh as she swivels her head to glare at him.

"You got a letter for her or what?"

"Oh, yeah." Louis actually doesn't have a letter yet, but content isn't really important. He finds a piece of parchment at the bottom of his bag, along with one of Stan's ballpoint pens -- useful in a pinch, those -- and scribbles against the floor, _Hi mum !! All well here, term off to a good start. Reckon Lottie's told you I'm alive. Don't worry, I'm keeping her safe from all the evils of second yr ! Miss you, lots of love to the girls xx Louis_

He rolls it up and steps in to affix it to Niamh's leg, avoiding her judgmental stare by looking at Niall's cold-flushed cheek, very close to him, instead. He could kiss him right now, if he wanted. He's never kissed anyone in the Owlery. It'd be a laugh. 

Niamh gives a threatening hoot, and Louis steps back hastily. "I think she is psychic, mate," he says. "She's a Legilimens." Niall quirks an eyebrow but Louis doesn't bother explaining. "It's for Johannah Deakin in Doncaster, yeah?" he says to the owl. 

Niall ducks his head as she takes off, her talons catching in the shoulder of his cloak. 

"You got homework?" he asks Louis in the odd stillness that follows. Owls rustle gently all around them. 

"Yeah," Louis says, staring up at the notch where Niamh disappeared. 

"You gonna do it?"

"Nah." 

"You wanna play Exploding Snap?"

Louis looks at him. "Yeah," he says, and if it surprises Niall like it surprises Louis, neither of them lets it show. "Your place or mine?" he asks with a wink that makes Niall roll his eyes. "I've never been in Hufflepuff."

"Actually... there's kind of a reason for that." 

"Besides you're the first Hufflepuff I've ever spoken to for longer than five minutes."

Niall snorts. "Yeah, besides that. I dunno -- we just don't really bring in outsiders. People say no one from outside Hufflepuff's been in the basement in more than a thousand years. Dunno know if I believe that, but… there you have it."

"Fine," Louis says, laughing, "whatever. Freaks. Even our security's not that high."

"So… Slytherin, then?"

"Yeah, alright, but I bet you're not gonna like it."

Slytherin's hosted its share of parties and weird sex dens and obvious secret society meetings in Louis' day, and it's not like he's never come back to the common room with someone from another house in tow. Still, he's self-conscious giving the password to the blank stretch of wall in the dungeons with Niall fidgeting behind him. Louis' cloak is still damp, and his socks, now. 

Almost everyone third-year and above is still down in the village, so the long, low-lit common room is mostly empty, the green lamps hanging from its stone ceiling flickering like they can't stay awake. A sad fifth-year who must have had her permission suspended or something is playing solitaire in a dimly lit corner. She snatches her hand back when she goes to cheat and the card she was pulling snarls at her. 

Under the biggest porthole window, two first-year boys are hunched over the house chess set of polished black marble and jade pieces. They're obviously Muggle-borns, a rarer sight here than in the other houses. Niall and Louis watch one of their knights wrestle a bishop to the ground as the kids look on with morbid glee. 

"Game night in Slytherin," Louis says expansively, dumping his cloak on a study table. "Everyone, this is a Hufflepuff. Don't panic. We don't want to spook him." 

The firsties glance up for a moment; Solitaire doesn't move a muscle. Niall laughs and starts up a round of applause. 

"S'nice here," he says. "Welcoming. I like these." He's taken his cloak off too and is checking out the imposing high-backed leather chairs by the huge stone fireplace. His bright yellow jumper is hilariously out of place in the greenish Slytherin gloom, but Louis can't help thinking he looks good here.

"Watch this," Louis says. He pulls all the pillows off the chairs and arranges them against their feet, so they form a kind of fort in front of the fire. "It's how I always do it. I've spotted some of the younger kids picking it up, now. My greatest contribution to posterity."

Niall steps onto the cushions on the floor, pads around on them like a dog figuring out how to lie down before he sits and curls up like he's never moving again. Louis' never seen an outsider take so gamely to the Slytherin dungeon. 

"You got Snap?" Niall asks him.

"Cal does."

"How 'bout tea?"

"Shit, I meant to get more in the village. Fresh out. I guess Stan might have some of those -- what do you call 'em. The Muggle kind."

"Teabags?" Niall asks, laughing. "Yeah, that'll do."

He stays behind while Louis goes and raids the other boys' things in the seventh-years' room. When he comes back, Solitaire has disappeared, and Niall is offering one of the first-years some strategy advice for his chess game. 

"What?" he says when he sees Louis grinning at him. "They asked."

"If you can't figure out how to win on your own, lad, you're in the wrong house," Louis tells the boy, who shrinks a little, curling one of his defeated pawns into his hand.

"Bit harsh," Niall comments as Louis sits down opposite him.

"Oh, c'mon. I'm only joking. It builds character." Niall cocks an eyebrow at him, and Louis huffs. "I'm kidding! Follow your dreams!" he calls over. The first-year ignores him, clearly trying to regain some dignity. 

"Better," Niall says. "We'll make a Puff of you yet."

Louis pulls a face. "Never say that to me again," he says. "Now -- make this happen, I don't understand this Muggle shit." He squints at his handful of teabags. "Yorkshire Tea," he reads, and thrusts them and a pair of stolen mugs at Niall, who takes them calmly and starts sorting it all out. 

"It's no different than when you brew it by magic with tea leaves," he tells Louis, filling the mugs with water from his wand and murmuring the charm to heat them up before dunking in the bags. "You pure-blood lot put yourselves through so many inconveniences just to avoid Muggle stuff, I don't get it." 

The first-years start to clear out, then, the chess pieces clattering as the board resets itself. Louis watches their tea brewing, watches Niall's patient expression as he watches it too. The dungeon door creaks open and shut as the younger boys exit. 

"Damn," Louis murmurs. "I forgot I don't have any milk. Is there a spell for milk? I can't remember." 

Niall laughs. "Not that I've learned. Could look it up."

"Nah, it's okay. _Evanesco_ ," Louis says, aiming his wand at one of the mugs, and the teabag inside it vanishes. 

He picks the tea up and blows steam off the surface, watching the liquid tremble a little along with his hands. Then he says, "Did you know I'm actually half-blood?"

Niall looks up. "What?"

"Yeah. At least I'm pretty sure I am. I never met my dad, but my mum says he was a Muggle." Louis swallows, wishing the tea was cool enough to drink. "Guess he always might've been a wizard, and she didn't know, but."

"Yeah," Niall says. His eyes are boring into Louis, and Louis can feel his heart racing in his chest, so hard it hurts. It's stupid that it's this difficult to tell someone. It shouldn't be a secret. It shouldn't matter. 

"You never told anyone," Niall says softly. Louis is so grateful for him. He didn't know until now. 

"No," Louis says. "Not even my friends. Not even Zayn." 

"You know I couldn't care less," Niall says. He chucks his teabag in the fire, picks up his tea and blows on it like Louis had. "I literally could not care less." 

"I know," Louis says. His hands won't stop moving where they're clutched around his mug, thumb rubbing over the side of his index finger, turning the skin white. 

Niall reaches out and touches him there with fingertips, catching his eyes. "I won't tell anyone," he says. Louis nods, looking down at where Niall's fingers are on him, a little awkward but undeniably comforting. After a moment Niall sits back. 

"I haven't spoken to my older brother in six years," he says, conversationally. Louis looks up at him, eyes wide. "Since I got my letter. He's not really cool with…" Niall gestures around, like the rough stone and green-tinged firelight of the lifeless common room are magic just for being here, then gestures to himself, a quick up and down, smiling with half his mouth. "All this." 

"That's shit," Louis says. His voice comes out rough, and he takes a ridiculously scalding sip of tea. "Bloody hell, Niall, you've done alright with that warming spell."

Niall laughs. "Sorry. I don't have a lot of finesse to it." 

"Yeah, me neither," Louis sighs. "Suppose we'll have to let it cool the old-fashioned way." And they sit there with two steaming mugs between them on the common room floor, catching each other's eyes then looking at the fire, all thoughts of Exploding Snap forgotten. 

*

Louis is jittery in his Quidditch gear at breakfast the morning of their season opener against Ravenclaw, his last season opener, his last chance to start a run at the Cup. But he needn't have worried: they trounce Ravenclaw in twenty minutes, and he still manages to give their Keeper a bruised rib and a mild concussion. His newly recruited second-year Chaser is ace, Louis and Calvin are a powerhouse behind the Bludgers, and Lauren closes with the Snitch as always. He skids to the ground out of breath and glowing and they carry him to the locker rooms like it was the championship, just to be dicks about it. 

It's Hufflepuff against Gryffindor the next weekend, putting Niall out of pocket with practice all week aside from class. That Saturday, Louis brings his tea and toast and strategy notebook like he always does, goes out in joggers and sits at the top of the stands. Fog rises from the pitch in the early morning -- they always schedule these qualifying rounds at unholy hours of the day -- and the crowd below him is a screaming mass of lurid reds and yellows. The roaring of some Gryffindor's lion banner echoes off the goal posts. Louis rolls his eyes. 

Niall shoots up high from the first whistle, and Louis gets distracted watching him almost immediately. He's seen Niall Seek before, has been a pain in his arse with the Beater's club before, but it's different now that he knows him for _him_ : how he's cautious but not timid, working his way around the field in measured loops, his head on a swivel. Gryffindor's new Seeker, Hornby, is more erratic. He goes in for feints at least three times only to have Niall ignore them before he gives up, and Louis feels weirdly proud. 

He shakes his head and lowers his eyes from Niall, honing in on the Gryffindor Chasers instead -- two of the three of them new this year, too, recently picked by Captain Payne the Keeper -- and starting to jot some things down. Slytherin will play the winner of this match in the next qualifier and Louis means to come correct. 

The new Gryffindor offense is mediocre but so are Hufflepuff's Beaters, making for a stupidly slow and low-scoring match that sees Louis finish his tea and toast and move on to doodling dicks in the back of his notebook, yawning ostentatiously in case any of the players can see him. To Niall's credit, the Snitch seems to be having one of those days where it just does not want to come out to play. Hornby has given up scouting and is following Niall from an obvious distance, which makes Louis smirk. A Slytherin wouldn't waste space trying to hide it. 

The sun is high in the sky and Louis is almost ready to bail when Niall dives. The gasp that goes up from the crowd sends a thrill through Louis, and he stands to see -- Niall's a blur spiraling down around the center Gryffindor goalpost, Hornby miles behind him. Niall pulls out of his dive with room to spare, and Louis sees the glint of gold in his hand. 

He only realizes he's cheering when some Gryffindors a few rows down look up at him, disgust on their faces and wilted lion pennants in their hands. 

"Yeah, bet you're glad you don't have to play us in the next round!" one of them yells. Louis rolls his eyes so hard it gives him vertigo. He picks his way down the stands.

"Right, mate," he says, patting the offending Gryffindor idiot on the chest while his friends gape on. "Your new Chasers look great, your Seeker, too. Good thing the game's not about scoring points, yeah?" And he leaves them there with their pennants roaring feebly into the clamor of the emptying stadium. 

*

"Bro, why did it take you 80 years to catch the fucking Snitch on Saturday?" Louis asks Niall first thing in Charms the week after. "Dive looked great, but bloody hell."

"Thanks," Niall says, his cheeks going ruddy. "God, that _Snitch_ , I dunno. it was just one of those --"

"One of those days, I figured," Louis says, grinning. "Wasn't sure if you saw something I didn't."

"I spotted it near Hornby a couple of times but I was too far away, didn't want to tip him off," Niall says. "He's literally awful, I was, like, having a nap up there." 

Louis is about to say something pleasantly threatening about the Hufflepuff-Slytherin match-up now set for two weeks away, but Flitwick calls them to order then and he doesn't get a chance.

They're working on a map of the wards this week, one of the last tasks before they cast them. Flitwick shoves all the desks to the sides of the room with a flick of his wand and conjures the layout of the castle in glowing white on the flagstone floor, and they pick around in it marking the weak spots they've identified in field tests, noting boundaries and putting things in order. Liam, Harry and company have been tasked with finessing the old wards, the outermost one in particular, and they sketch it all out in color-coded arcs around the periphery, arguing about whether that should be chartreuse or fuchsia.

Louis creeps up on Niall as he balances with one foot atop the Slytherin common room, noting a possible fracture with a mid-air rune. He still has to mumble the spell. 

"You're standing on my bed," Louis mutters to him, mouth right by his ear.

Niall startles, hops in place and puts his foot through the Potions classroom. "Fuck off," he mutters back to Louis, but he's grinning. They both watch the boundaries of Potions reform against the floor in shining white. 

"You shouldn't tell me your Seeking strategy, you know," Louis says to him after a moment. Niall looks up. "I feel like an arse prying intel out of you when you don't even think twice about giving it away. You've made an honest man out of me, Niall Horan."

Niall snorts. "As if. And anyway, we can still win with you knowing that I'm, like, a decent Seeker who's not a fucking idiot. Not rocket science."

"I don't understand that expression," Louis tells him, and without waiting for an explanation, he goes on: "And don't talk shit, your Beaters are bloody awful. I could take 'em both one-handed."

"I'd pay money to see that," Niall says, but from his tone it's hard to tell if he favors his own teammates or Louis more in the fight. 

"Gentlemen," Flitwick interjects from across the map, "locker room talk is for the locker room."

"Sorry, Professor," Niall says, but he smiles at Louis.

"Pathetic," Louis says, shaking his head. He's smiling too. 

*

Flitwick's class rolls on like a runaway train through practice casting sessions and spell workshops, toward their imminent goal of actually putting the damn things up. It's less stressful than Louis' other classes at this point, though -- it's fun, Charms, and messy, and it feels worth Louis' time. Only one of these things is true of Potions, the bane of Louis' Wednesday and Friday afternoons; Hagrid's class is like the Niall Horan Variety Hour, where Louis fails to control all manner of creatures but gets to grin at Niall turning up with green fingertips from NEWT Herbology, telling his botanical troubles to the beasts of the week, only some of whom are interested in hearing about them. 

Improbably, Defense is worst of all. They're honing in on Patronuses for their second unit because the universe wants Louis to suffer, and he's already skipped class once so he doesn't have to face not being able to cast the charm in front of a bunch of judgy fucking Ravenclaws. 

He begs Niall for a tutorial during their only shared free period, which happens Wednesdays before lunch. 

"Anything," Louis tells him in the middle of the crowded Entrance Hall at class change. Louis deserves this public shaming for being a failure. "I will do anything. I'll -- I don't know. I don't have a lot to offer. But name your price and it's yours."

Niall's grinning at him. Louis knows he doesn't really need to negotiate -- it's pretty clear from Niall's face that all Louis had to do was ask politely. But Louis has certain rules he abides by in his life, and striking a lot unnecessary bargains is one of them. 

"Fine," Niall says. "Sit with me at dinner tonight. At Hufflepuff." 

"That's it? You've got a whole universe of Louis Tomlinson handouts at your fingertips and that's what you choose?"

"You just told me you don't have a lot to offer." Niall's laughing. "You're not very good at this."

"Shut up," Louis says, grabbing him by the tie. "Let's go." 

They wind up at their usual smoking spot beneath the bleachers -- "It's a safe space!" Niall insists, despite the dry cold and the crunch of old snow underfoot -- and Louis grips his wand with fingerless gloves and tries with all his might to think happy. Niall's already cast his wolf, and it circles them, wary, as silvery mist shudders out of Louis' wandtip for the umpteenth time, curling like breath into the cold air. 

"If you can't do it in the cold, you'll never be able to do it in real life," Niall advises from the sidelines.

"Real life, yeah, great," Louis bites out. "When am I ever going to use this on a real fucking Dementor?"

"You never know," Niall says. "Plenty of ghosties and monsters left over out there from the war. What are you taking Defense for if that's your attitude?"

"I don't know," Louis says through gritted teeth. " _Expecto patronum_!" 

There's barely a shimmer. "Fuck," he spits.

"Calm down." Niall's close -- right there, in fact, when Louis turns around. He meets Louis' eye like, _Is this okay?_ before he steps haltingly into his space and touches his wand arm. 

Louis is shaky on the inhale, less so on the exhale. Niall is right behind him, his chest in his woolly Muggle coat brushing Louis' cloak at his back. Louis can smell the rough yarn of Niall's black and yellow scarf, can feel the warmth of him everywhere. 

"What are you thinking about?" Niall murmurs. 

"You mean generally, or for the charm?"

"For the charm," Niall says, and Louis can hear his smile. 

It wouldn't be appropriate for to turn around and kiss him now, but Louis wants to, with sudden intensity. Louis doesn't kiss people while he's sober. It hasn't happened in years. 

He bites his lip. "This day on the lake last spring," he says. "Me and Zayn nicked a rowboat and stayed out there all day just floating around, talking to the giant squid." 

"Sounds nice," Niall says. His voice gets so low sometimes when he's not speaking up. Louis suppresses a shiver. 

"It was before he told me," he says, "that he was gonna leave."

"You think… maybe Zayn memories might not work so well anymore?" Niall asks, in what sounds like as gentle a tone as he can manage.

Louis lets his breath out, a harsh sigh. "Have you got any better ideas?"

Niall laughs a little, and Louis turns by half to frown at him. He can see the scant freckles across his nose, red with cold. "I assume you've lived a fuller life than just -- y'know," Niall says. "What else have you got?"

Louis thinks, and thinks, and waits for Niall to move away from him, but he doesn't. Finally he takes a breath. "Alright," he says. Niall's hand is steadying under his arm, his chin nearly resting on Louis' shoulder.

This time when Louis says the spell, the mist tumbles out of his wand with purpose, roiling downward. Still, for a long moment he thinks it isn't going to take. He shifts back against Niall and they both watch as the charm wobbles close to the ground, swirling in uncertain circles, before it finds an edge, and another, and then rights itself. 

A little fox blinks up at them, silver from the tufts of its ears to its bushy tail. Its body is wispy and it seems to be having some trouble staying together, its paws sticking to the snow like heavy smoke when it moves to sniff Louis' shoes, but it's real. 

"Ha," Louis says. It comes out choked. He looks back at Niall, too happy to be ironic about it. "I did it." 

"I thought you said you had before," Niall says. He steps back from Louis, but his voice is warm.

"This is already longer than it's ever lasted," Louis says, crouching to look at the fox. It twitches its nose at him, the exact same mannerism Louis has, and then jumps in the snow, silvery paws disappearing and reappearing. 

Niall's wolf is still with them, and it stalks over to check the situation out. The Patronuses seem to confer for a moment, and then they touch noses, a silver blush where they overlap. 

"That is so sweet," Louis says. He puts an arm around Niall's waist, gives him a sidelong squeeze. 

"What'd you think of?" Niall asks.

"Not telling," Louis sing-songs. 

Niall raises his eyebrows. "Is it about _me_?" he asks, grinning.

"Bit full of yourself, lad," Louis says. "We'll make a Slytherin of you yet." 

Niall just looks at him, biting a smile back into his mouth. The Patronuses circle each other a moment longer, then evaporate together, the snow where they stood undisturbed by pawprints. 

*

It's November then, and the new moon comes on a Friday. Flitwick's class starts to arrive on the Astronomy Tower at ten minutes to midnight, bundled up with their charts and diagrams rolled up beneath their arms and their wands at the ready. Harry Styles is in spangled pyjama pants and slippers, his Ravenclaw tie wrapped around his curly hair like a headband. 

This has been their proving ground, an isolated spot to test the wards before they wrap the castle in them, but tonight's the night and Louis is unaccountably nervous. His and Niall's ward has been fine-tuned within an inch of its life, tested and retested against Harry and Liam's and the others' here and in the safety of the Charms classroom, but still. A lot of Louis' Slytherin pride is riding on this moment, not to mention the long-term safety and security of Hogwarts Castle. 

Niall's gnawing on his thumbnail next to him, looking around in the dark. Louis remembers the first weekend back when it was just the two of them up here. He wants to say something, but Flitwick speaks up. 

"Ladies and gentlemen. I'd go through it all with you again, but after weeks of going through it on those long Monday afternoons, I daresay you're ready to put something into the world. We've got just a few minutes. Positions, please." 

They line up in a circle around the ramparts, Niall beside Louis, Harry and Liam on his other side, their classmates filling it in. It's their wards containing all the rest -- Niall and Louis' the gel that holds the inside together, Harry and Liam's the outermost line of defense. Louis rolls the handle of his wand against his palm. 

"Thirty seconds," Flitwick says. And then, before Louis has finished drawing another breath: "Now." 

Niall's wand is already lifted, and he starts to say the words, a steady stream of Greek hybrids finding their way out through his accent. Harry's casting too, beside him -- the inner and outer shells. Louis and Liam are on the assist, and Louis hangs on Niall's every syllable, waiting for him to stumble or need to draw a breath. 

He tags in seamlessly when Niall's eyes go to him, and around them their classmates are at work now, too, until it's a chorus of incantations in all directions. Everyone's wands are skyward around the edge of the tower, but there's no magic visible yet -- just the thrum of it in the air, the starless night, black sky full of clouds. 

The last voice dies, and there's a beat in which no one moves or breathes. Then Flitwick begins to chant. 

" _Fianto duri,_ " he says, " _repello inimicum_ ," and they all join in. The wards are primed in their wands from the first round of spells, and they pour out now, streams of blue energy, fiery sparks, joining and finally spreading at the distance set by the spell to form a dome. Louis can see the pinkish hue of his and Niall's there, a glow within the rest. It ripples outward, chasing the edges of the outer wards as they grow. 

Louis can feel it, too, his wand warm in his hand and Niall warm beside him. He's never done magic like this before. 

The last streams of color leave the last wands then, and they watch them travel outward to fill in the holes in the shield. It glows a brilliant blue for a moment and Louis knows with a thrill that they've done it. Then it disappears. 

Silence for a long moment, then Liam says, "Did it work?" and Niall bursts out laughing. 

"We'll spend the rest of term monitoring it, of course," Flitwick says. "We could check now, but even the worst-cast protective enchantment is bound to hold up for a few minutes. The only way to tell if these wards suffer the same fate as those of the past eight years is to watch and wait." He smiles at Louis then, and Niall, Harry and Liam beside him. "But I think you've made some promising changes. I've got high hopes." 

"So… that's it, then?" Louis asks, grinning. "Free to go for the rest of term?"

Flitwick has the grace to laugh. "No, Mr. Tomlinson, now we have to turn all this into essays." He claps his hands, and Louis can't even be mad at him. "But those can wait until Monday. Go enjoy your Friday nights."

The class starts to trickle out, talking and laughing, still full of adrenaline. Niall's one of the last leaving, but he turns around when Louis doesn't move, still standing on the rampart looking at him.

"Coming, Lou?" he asks. "Payno wants the whole class at the party in Gryffindor, he wants to do a shot." 

"Yeah," Louis says. His heart is pounding in his throat, but it feels good, too. "Come back a minute." 

Niall steps out of the shadows of the tower, the old memorial obscured behind him. It's freezing cold and scarily quiet up here without all the other bodies.

"Remember at the start of term," Louis says to him, "how I found you up here."

"Yeah." Niall starts to smile, unsure, and Louis wonders if he sees it coming. It doesn't matter. He reaches for Niall's cloak and slips his hands inside to pull him in by his robes, the flash of a yellow jumper beneath. 

"I should have done this sooner," Louis says, and he kisses him, finds his waist in his robes with one hand and slips the other into his hair, cupping the cold shell of his ear. Niall's frozen for half a second beneath him and then he goes soft, kisses back like a sigh of relief. And it's perfect, nothing but the soft heat of his mouth, his arm around Louis' shoulders, tentative fingertips and then his whole palm pressed to Louis' cheek. His lower lip is sweet beneath the tip of Louis' tongue, and his body feels so good against Louis', the only warmth in the world. 

There's a gentle wet sound as they break apart, and then only their breathing and the wind against the stones as they stare at each other. 

Louis grins first. "Say something, lad, you're the first person I've kissed sober in about a hundred years." 

Niall's laughing, and it's almost too dark to see but he looks pink all over, illuminated by some phantom light refracted off the ward above them. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I don't know." He nods, a big smile splitting his face as he looks at Louis. "Yeah," he says again, and apparently that's all he can manage. 

"An eloquent contribution, as always, by Niall Horan of Hufflepuff, but we'll take it as a yes." Louis can't stop grinning. He grabs Niall's chilly hand and pulls. "C'mon, let's go get drunk." 

It's the most boisterous party Louis thinks he's ever been to this early in the year, like they just won the House Cup or something, except it's people of every house packed into the Gryffindor common room, singing and setting off sparklers and proposing elaborate toasts. The whole school had watched the wards go up from their windows, it turns out, and the Charms class are heroes, their victory infectious. Even the Ravenclaws are singing, sitting on one another's shoulders. 

Louis is still holding Niall's hand as they push into the crowd in search of Liam for the obligatory Firewhiskey shot. They find him wedged into a window nook, laughing with his girlfriend, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Niall presses himself to Louis' side as they stumble to a halt there, out of breath. He doesn't like crowds, Louis has discovered. He puts an arm around Niall's waist and snaps his fingers in front of Liam's face.

"Oi, Payno," he yells over the clamor. "Your party sucks." 

It's clear Liam's already a drink or two ahead of them when he turns his shining eyes their way, face bursting into a grin. "You made it!" he crows. Louis grins, starts to take his cloak off to dump in the corner with Niall's. "Where's Harry, we've got a shot to do--"

"Excuse me, everyone." There's the ringing clink of a glass, and Harry's gravelly stoner voice, carrying over the crowd somehow. "Ahem." 

Louis and Niall turn to see Harry standing on a table, swaying gently, tapping a beer bottle with his wand. "Oh Christ," Niall says, while Louis starts to laugh. The crowd is quieting to listen. Someone wolf-whistles from the back.

"I would just like all of you to know," Harry states, slow even by his usual standards, "that you are all very important to me, and I think all of you are very, very special. And good." He spreads his arm like a rockstar and turns his back on the crowd. "I love every single one of you!" he shouts at the wall.

"Merlin, he's gonna stage dive," Louis whispers, right before Harry falls backwards. The Hufflepuffs closest to him catch him, as Hufflepuffs can be counted on to do, and a cheer goes up, and then the rest of the noise as Harry is passed around the room. 

"I'll fucking drop you," Niall yells to him, laughing as he gets closer. Louis can see the grin on Harry's upside-down face. A bunch of Gryffindors shuffle him over, and Harry flails around and then drops to the ground, cat-like. 

"Hello, team," he says as if he just walked in. "Are we doing a shot?"

So they do, shot glasses produced and filled out of nowhere in reliable Gryffindor fashion by Liam, whiskey on their fingers as they toast in the middle of their circle. "To wards!" Liam says emphatically.

"To _friendship_!" Harry practically screams. 

"You're all of you idiots," Louis yells, but he's grinning. 

"Stop stalling!" Niall shouts, and they drink. 

Louis is already well on his way to wasted a little while later when he notices, with a funny absent tug in his stomach, that his mates from Slytherin aren't there. Maybe they were and they left, or they're aiming for fashionably late. It's weirder to note that he doesn't mind it, having a world that's separate from theirs. 

He lost Niall to some Hufflepuffs a few minutes ago and is wending through the crowd in search of him when someone starts up a Celestina Warbeck remix on the wireless. The bass thuds through Louis' body.

"Where'd you go?" comes Niall's bright voice, right behind him. 

Louis spins on the spot. "I've been here the whole time, lad! Where'd you go?"

Niall's laughing, flushed and glowy with the sweaty intoxication of the room. He's lost his Hufflepuff jumper somewhere and his shirt's untucked, the top two buttons undone, no tie. Louis thinks his heart is going to burst in his chest with all this. He grabs at Niall's shoulder and the back of his neck, pulls him in. He can't stop smiling even against his mouth, so their teeth clack together when Louis kisses him, lets it go messy in that careless way reserved for good PDA. Someone catcalls nearby and Louis lifts a middle finger without coming up for air. 

He goes for Niall's hips after, then his hand, twirls him to the beat of the song like Muggle electro, or at least that's what it was called in Louis' horribly dated textbook for Muggle Studies, which he took just in third year to win a bet. 

"What do you lot call this kind of music?" he yells in Niall's ear, pulling him close. People around them are dancing too, most of them silly, doing the twist or whatever. A few people are grinding. Louis lets his thigh go just between Niall's, cheeky, and slips his hands around his waist. 

"What?" Niall laughs. "Techno!" 

Louis shakes his head, lets Niall kiss him again as the beat swells and drops and they move their hips together with only the barest sense of rhythm. It feels so good not to care who's watching. They're on top of the world. 

"Hey, let's go see if we can find Liam's diary," Louis says to him.

"Liam doesn't keep a diary."

"That you know of," Louis says, and he catches Niall's wrist and charges through the throng with him. ("Who keeps a fucking diary?" Niall wonders aloud to no one as he lets himself be pulled.)

Louis pokes his head slowly through the door at the top of the Gryffindor boys' staircase, in case they're catching anyone _in flagrante delecto_ , but the coast is clear save for someone's angry cat. The tabby shoots out and down the stairs, yowling, as soon as Louis pushes the door open.

"Oops," he says, grinning back at Niall. He tugs him in and locks the door behind them. "Ugh, it stinks of fucking Gryffindor in here." 

"That's not very nice," Niall says, strolling around the room and inspecting the professional Quidditch players wobbling about on magic posters on the walls, and the still-color Muggle footie players beside those. "Your dorm smells like seaweed."

"My common room smells like seaweed," Louis corrects. "My room smells fantastic, thank you. Like… elegance and superiority." 

"Well, I reckon I wouldn't know about your room," Niall says, twinkling at him. 

"Yeah, we'll have to work on that," Louis says. "Hey, this must be Liam's, there's a bloody headshot of Sophia on the wall." 

"Ew," Niall laughs, coming over to look. Liam's bed is made the way the house elves do it; he clearly hasn't been in here recently.

"They are nice beds, these big Gryffindor four-posters," Louis says. He strokes the barely-there stubble on his jaw, and Niall shoots him a look. 

"Wanna try it out?"

The picture of Sophia on the wall rolls her eyes and walks out of the frame, and Louis breaks out grinning. "That's the Slytherin I like to see." 

Niall flumps down on the edge of Liam's bed, scoots back and watches, eyes low, as Louis straddles his thighs and knees forward, settling across his hips. 

"Hey," he murmurs.

"Hi," Niall says. His eyes but not his face are tipped up toward Louis, so Louis rubs a thumb over his throat, the underside of his jaw, tilts his head back and kisses him deeply. Niall's temples are damp with sweat when Louis slides a hand into his hair, and Louis can taste booze under his tongue, more intoxicating than any shot. Niall makes a noise in the back of his throat, starting to tremble.

"C'mere," he gasps, breaking away. He shifts and pulls at Louis until Louis lies down with him, stretching out and kissing Niall again with hardly a beat missed. He crowds close and tugs at Niall's waist until he feels the line of Niall's dick in his school trousers, pressed against Louis' thigh, and he rocks into him until Niall's breathing goes rough in his mouth. 

"Louis," he mumbles. His hair is wild from Louis' hands, eyes flicking between Louis' and down to his mouth like he doesn't know where he'd rather look. 

"That's good," Louis breathes. He's trying to be strategic with the pressure of his thigh but his coordination is somewhat lacking at the moment. Niall doesn't seem to mind. He moans when Louis' leg goes between his own and he can press himself down closer, his hands scrabbling around the small of Louis' back and then clutching at the swell of his arse, rolling their hips together. 

"Fuck," Niall says, "I -- let me wank you off."

Louis shivers. "Yeah," he says, grinning, can't help it. "Merlin, I'm drunk," he says. "I'm so happy this is happening."

"Me too," Niall says. He's so much like this, desperate and sweet and a little clumsy as he yanks down his flies, pops the button on his trousers and then starts in on Louis'. 

"I could've gotten yours," Louis says. 

"I'm a team player," Niall mumbles. "Oh, fuck." Louis has shuffled the whole works down around his thighs and palmed the head of his dick, already slick with dribbles of precome. 

"Get a move on, lad, I can't remember if I locked the door."

"Jesus," Niall says, laughing with a hitch in it as Louis starts to pull him off. He wraps his hand dry around Louis' dick at first, just squeezes at him until Louis is trembling. Then he works Louis over with his own slick too, and they're breathing each other's air, foreheads tipped together, eyes half shut. 

"Bet Liam or someone has lotion somewhere," Niall mumbles, lips brushing Louis' at odd moments, their bodies moving in time with their hands.

"Too late to find out," Louis says, breathless, "fuck, kiss me," and Niall does. His hand is fast and tight on Louis' cock and Louis tries to match him, twists his fist so Niall does too, thumbs over the head of Niall's dick and makes Niall moan loud into his mouth. The sound lances through Louis like magic. 

"You sound so good," he mumbles. "You're so good, Niall, just like that."

"Yeah," Niall breathes. It's hot between them, and Louis' wrist aches, his lip smarting where Niall's nipped at it, everything alight. Louis wants to grab for his waist but his other hand is pinned beneath them, so he pushes his hips into Niall's hand and Niall does the same, like Louis knew he would. 

"Gonna come," Niall says soon enough, his voice ragged against Louis' mouth, and the words alone would be enough to make all the muscles in Louis' thighs tense up. He focuses everything on his hand on Niall's cock, pulls him off like a goddamn winner, and Niall moans against his jaw, his hips punching up. He grabs a fistful of Louis' shirt with his free hand beneath them as he starts to come, groaning, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Ha," Louis says, strained as he wanks Niall through it, pulling the last of it out of him. "A Slytherin never comes first."

"Glad I picked a Slytherin, then," Niall says. His voice is syrup-slow with orgasm, eyes still shut, but his hand keeps its pace on Louis' cock. He kisses him like it's breathing, mumbles against his mouth, "C'mon, Lou." 

Louis whines, the heat going tight inside him, whole body shivering. He bites Niall's lower lip, and then he's coming, falling over the edge of it into nothing.

He breathes shakily against Niall's mouth for what feels like a long time after, and finally Niall starts to laugh. 

"God," he says. "In Liam Payne's bed." He flops onto his back, an arm over his eyes, cackling. His trousers and shorts are around his thighs, and there's come in Louis' hand, on his stomach, the hem of his uniform shirt. 

"Fuck," Louis drags out. He rolls over and wipes his palm on the duvet cover.

"Ew, Louis," Niall laughs. 

"Niall, we're _wizards_ ," Louis says, and the exasperation is real but so is the affection. "Fuck, where's my wand?" But he leans in and kisses Niall again for a long time before he looks for it. His body goes dizzy at the feel of Niall's hand cupping the back of his head, at the way his dozy eyes linger when they break apart. Then Louis wriggles away, grinning, finds both their wands shoved beneath a pillow, and sets about destroying the evidence. 

*

It's been a while since Louis had someone whose time he both wanted to and was allowed to monopolize, but with Niall it's easy. He goes to see him at the Quidditch pitch the next day while the whole Hufflepuff squad is out, and Niall has to fly down to the stands and hover over Louis in mid-air. Louis can tell the pink on his face isn't just from the cold. 

"Alright, Nialler?" he asks, grinning up at him.

"Hi," Niall says, out of breath, or breathless, it's tough to say. "Uh, my captain says you need to leave."

Louis pouts. "I just came to see you," he says. "You look good on that broom."

"Thanks." Niall keeps trying to chew the smile back into his mouth, but he can't, and his face scrunches up. "You look good, um… in that scarf."

"This old thing?" Louis plucks at the standard Slytherin colors around his neck, laughing. "What are you doing later?" 

"Got this 'til, like, 3 o'clock."

Louis whistles. "Merlin, you are preparing, aren't you?"

Niall smirks at him. 

"Wow." Louis stands up. "Well, shit, I guess I'll just go then."

"Wait," Niall laughs, "pick me up at lunch, we can study."

" _Study_ ," Louis repeats, "yeah. Think you can navigate that broom over here a moment, Puff?"

Niall's a solid flyer any day, but his form has never looked better to Louis than as he inches his broom down and forward gently, until he's right in front of Louis at the edge of the stands. 

Louis beckons him with a crooked finger, and Niall laughs, leans forward over the handle until Louis can wrap a fist in the front of his yellow practice robes and stretch way out over the side of the box and kiss him. His face feels cold close to Louis' but his lips are warm, and familiar, and Louis shivers at the glowy drunk memory of last night. 

"Niall!" the Hufflepuff captain -- Sophie Donnelly, a sixth-year and the only female Keeper on any team -- shouts from somewhere very far away. "Happy for you, mate, but can he go now, please?"

Louis laughs against Niall's mouth and sits back. "Stern words from your fearless leader," he says. "I'm gonna go tell my team we'd better forfeit."

"Shut up," Niall mumbles, grinning at him. "Meet me in the Great Hall at, like, four, we can work on Hagrid's mermaid essay in Slytherin." 

"It's a date," Louis says. He flips Donnelly and the rest the bird as Niall flies off, but his head's still spinning with that: a _date_. He means it like that, even if he's joking, too. A day ago he didn't have this. And it isn't scary yet, isn't too big. It's just Niall. It's just good.

*

Slytherin has its all-day Quidditch practice on Sunday, and the reality of Louis' situation starts to set in: he and Niall have to play for rank in next term's playoff bracket the following weekend, and Louis will have to treat him like any other Hufflepuff. It's ridiculous, so Hogwarts, that it's weighing on his mind, but it is. 

Zayn would judge him for this, he thinks bitterly, watching his team work through tight formations from high above the pitch, the wind in his hair, stinging cold against his cheeks. But he's responsible for this, carrying this torch for his house. He still wants to win like burning. 

Another thing he wants is to make out with Niall in the back of the library, and steal time with him in the Slytherin dorms, cuddled in one chair arguing about the development of matriarchal political structures among merpeople. It's tough to balance, emotionally, but somehow Louis manages, shoves the game to the back of his mind until their next practice. 

He doesn't even remember he's got his Patronus demonstration coming up in Defense until he's making eyes at Niall in the back of Flitwick's lecture on Monday, and he hears Flitwick say the name of the charm. He looks up, startled, has no idea what they're even talking about -- he's put enough work into this damn class for one term, thanks, he can take an afternoon off from paying attention.

"What?" Niall mouths at him. 

Louis scribbles him a note about it, crumples it in his fist and passes it over. He takes advantage of the hand-off to tickle Niall's palm, and Niall snorts.

"Gentlemen," Flitwick says, steepling his fingers. "Anything you'd like to share?"

"No, Professor," Louis chirps, while Niall schools his features. Liam rolls his eyes at them like he knows exactly what it is they have to share -- well, Louis isn't sure Liam knows _everything_ , but some details are better left unconfirmed. 

Niall's got Quidditch until late that night, so Louis doesn't get another chance to practice his Patronus with him, or even to steal some good vibes by way of snogging him senseless in some dark corner. He doesn't go down to the field and harass the Puffs to give Slytherin practice time they aren't owed like he would normally, either. It unsettles him some, that he's fine being a dick to Sophie Donnelly, but not to Niall, but he puts it from his mind.

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, he walks into Defense with a determined spring in his step. _Manifest it_ , he thinks. It's true that his charm had gone better than expected last class, though still worse than when Niall was there. The critique from his classmates meant he's now plotting the gory demise of several Ravenclaws. 

Now, he tries to tell himself he's got an unlimited store of new memories to work with -- the Astronomy Tower, and Gryffindor, and Niall laughing and gasping under his hands and every moment since. 

One of the other Slytherins gets up and casts an adequate hawk Patronus, which swoops around the room buzzing everyone's heads and calling silently before it dissipates. Then it's Louis' turn.

There's a thrill of nerves as he walks to the front of the classroom. For a moment he gives into the panic that he'll need Niall there to make it work, that the memories alone won't be enough. _If you can't do it in the cold, you'll never be able to do it in real life._ He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. 

He can hear his classmates rustling around, the creak of a floorboard, and then nothing but the memory -- the exhilaration of the wards going up, the colors of them, magic in his fingertips. Niall's hands. Niall's mouth on his. Niall's laugh in the Gryffindor dormitory, breathless and joyful. 

He opens his eyes. " _Expecto patronum!_ " 

He knows he's done it before the fox's silver tail has even finished tumbling from his wand. The Patronus lands light-footed on the ground and shakes itself, runs a few paces forward then circles back to Louis, flicking its tail like it's up to no good. His heart is so full it hurts. 

"Hiya," he breathes, dropping into a crouch. The Patronus cocks its head at him. It looks so friendly, its features more fully-formed than they'd been under the bleachers, its paws solid on the stone classroom floor. Somewhere outside of this the professor is praising his form, a few of his classmates are cooing, but for Louis there's nothing but the little fox and the trust on its silver face, the familiar twitch of its nose. He can't wait to tell Niall. 

*

The week passes in a blur of exhausting Quidditch drills, forgettable hours in class and memorable moments with Niall, and before Louis is even close to ready it's the morning of the match. The wintry pitch is moorish with unseasonable fog when Louis looks out a window coming upstairs. Not great conditions, but they've played in worse. 

He's in half his gear already, everything but shinguards and broomstick and club, which are stashed in their locker room. His newly broken-in leather Beater's gloves are in his pocket, and he fidgets with them as he sits at Slytherin with his team not eating, the excited pre-Quidditch buzz of the Great Hall pressing against his eardrums. 

"Eat," Calvin tells him, shoving a plate of toast at him. His gloves are already on. "You take a hit to the stomach and it's gonna hurt either way." 

"I'm not gonna take a hit," Louis says, low. His eyes are on Niall across the Hall, his blond head obvious at the center of his team amid a mass of yellow. He's the smallest guy on the squad, the Seeker always is, but Louis doesn't have any trouble picking him out. 

Niall catches his eye and gives a smile that seems to try to say, _It's only Quidditch, yeah?_ But it comes across a little tight. Louis returns it in kind. He can see Cal watching him in his peripheral vision, but he looks at Niall for as long as he can, until one of their Beaters steals his attention away. 

The Hufflepuff team leaves the Hall first, to cheers from everyone but Slytherin, since neither Gryffindor nor Ravenclaw want to play them in the next round. Louis takes it as a compliment.

His stomach is turning now, though, and it seems too late for toast. He and Niall didn't talk, but it doesn't change the fact that not twelve hours ago, Louis was getting off with him in a pile of cushions in one of the Defense practice rooms, laughing into his mouth. He's so fucked.

He laces up his boots in the locker room, shinguards biting into his knees over those, straps the captain's band around his sleeve and pulls his gloves on. Last of all he picks his club up, and the feel of it eases the ringing in his ears some. Like his wand or an old spell, that familiarity.

"Alright, gang," he says, turning to his team. "Last hurrah."

"It isn't," Lauren points out.

"Shut the fuck up," Louis barks. "Now, I know it's only Hufflepuff--" he takes a deep breath -- "but win this and we go into next term dead set to play Gryffindor in the quarter, and as we all know, they're bloody terrible."

This gets an appreciative laugh. Merlin, Louis loves these people. His people. He squares his shoulders. 

"Let's knock some heads!" he shouts, and they all put their hands in.

He shakes Donnelly's hand way too firmly at the center of the slush-covered pitch, then steps back and mounts his broom. He wants to catch Niall's eye across the line, to know if Niall's looking at him too, but he can't. 

Then the blast of Madame Hooch's whistle and the balls burst from their box, and Louis kicks off hard against the ground and doesn't look back.

He and Calvin split off and race the Puff Beaters for the Bludgers. Cal gets to one first and Louis doesn't, meaning he has to do a barrell roll straightaway to avoid a Bludger to the face, which pretty much sets the tone for the match. He circles back, head spinning, intercepts the other Bludger batted his direction by Cal and sends it spiraling toward a Hufflepuff Chaser, pitch and hit. The kid doubles over as it hits him and drops the Quaffle, and one of Louis' Chasers, soaring beneath just like she's supposed to, catches it one-handed. Within seconds she's at the goalposts and then it's sailing past Donnelly's ear. Ten-nil Slytherin. 

Louis and Cal fly close formation after that, keeping up the offensive defense until it's 90 to 30 and Louis confident enough that Hufflepuff morale is low. He peels off, dropping down with a swoop in his stomach to crack a Bludger skyward at one of Hufflepuff's Beaters. He glances up to make wicked eye contact with her as he flies away just as quick. 

And then he spots Niall, half-obscured by fog way above the pitch like he seems prone to doing this early in a game, and if Louis wasn't already flying it would feel like falling, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. He'd been doing so well pretending Niall wasn't out here, focusing all his energy on batting Bludger after Bludger into yellow-clad bodies. 

It's then that he hears and feels a crack of wood and his broom goes into a tailspin. "Fuck!" he shouts, yanking his wand out of its thigh holster and whirling around like he's on fire. One of the Puffs sent a Bludger into the end of his broom and there's a chunk out of it, a glancing blow that left the shaft splintered at an angle. 

He's whipping through space as he yells the spell once, then again, losing grip on which way is up and where the stands are and if he's about to smash into them, and then just when his lungs start to go tight he feels the aerodynamics lock back into place. He wrenches himself out of the spin feet from the ground and doesn't look back to confirm with his eyes that he's fixed it. 

There's a roar from the green- and silver-clad part of the crowd as he rockets upward, and he pulls around to face the main action of the match with the blood pounding in his ears. He sees Niall again immediately, closer than they've been since kickoff. He's stopped in mid-air just up the pitch. 

He's staring at Louis, and Louis realizes the tailspin scared him, that he thought Louis was going to crash. Then he sees the Snitch, glittering just behind where Niall is hovering, frozen. 

It all happens within seconds. He can see his Seeker careening toward it from the other end of the pitch, but she's a mile away. Then he hears the distant crack of Calvin's bat against a Bludger meant for Louis. Pitch and hit. Niall hasn't seen, he hasn't moved. A moment more and the Snitch could dart out right in front of him, or he could turn and spot it, and Lauren still isn't close enough. 

Louis grits his teeth. "Move," he hisses, and he doesn't know if it's to himself or Niall, but Niall jolts. His head whips around like he's just been un-Petrified and he sees the Snitch behind him, yanks his broom around. 

The Bludger is sailing toward Louis faster than Niall's moving. They can still win. 

Louis' club connects hard with the ball and it rockets toward Niall, but the bad aim is obvious. It's not even going to whiff him. A second later, Louis sees Niall's hand close around the Snitch. His forward momentum nearly carries him over the front of his broomstick, but he comes up triumphant. 

The Bludger spirals off down the pitch, useless. Louis hears Lauren's loud expletive as she skids to a halt in mid-air. He's numb, watching it all. He missed Niall on purpose, and his entire team is going to know it. 

The Hufflepuff squad descends to the pitch in a joyful tangle, and as Louis floats down after them at half-speed he sees Niall go up on their shoulders, grinning big. He looks away before Niall can glance up at him. 

Slytherin goes straight to the locker room, no interest in standing around on the mushy pitch fielding the withering glares of their housemates, but then it's just Louis in there on his own, fielding the same from his teammates. 

"The fuck was that, Tommo?" Lauren asks, after a torturous stretch of silence. 

"I missed," he snaps, but he's not looking at her. "It happens. If you'd been where you were supposed to--"

"Bullshit," she sneers. "You fucked it on purpose. You didn't want to hurt your little Puff boyfriend."

"Shut the fuck up, Lauren."

"Like we don't know," Calvin says, quieter than her. His voice is cold in Louis' chest. He knows Cal is looking at him but he can't meet any of their eyes. 

"Showers," he says. "Practice Thursday. Good flying today." 

It's the lowest moment, that he's lauding them for a loss just to save face. Because it's true, it was good flying, and it should have won them the game. It's Louis' fault they lost, in front of everyone. 

He supposes the team is probably going to go get drunk by themselves, but he goes to the library instead to do a Potions essay and torment himself. He skips lunch in the process, has barely eaten all day now. The castle has felt all but empty since the game; probably the other three houses are celebrating a mortifying Slytherin defeat in one of the towers. Louis eats a meager dinner alone at the most off hour he can, and in any other year he might have gone up to the Astronomy Tower after that to sort it all out, but it's a Niall place now. There's no escaping him, thinking about him. So Louis just goes to bed. 

He hardly ever closes his curtains but he leaves them open with purpose tonight, wanting nothing less than the appearance of hiding from Cal and the rest of his mates even though that's exactly what he's doing. He's long since put away the textbook he was failing to absorb and extinguished both the lamp and his wandlight by the time the boys start to stumble in. 

They don't talk to Louis and he doesn't talk to them as they fall into their beds, and soon there are three other bodies snoring around him and the empty space where Zayn used to be, and Louis is staring at the dark stone ceiling. Bands of dark green light shiver there, barely visible, refracted through the lakewater under the moon outside the window. He feels more hollow than he has since September. 

It's not just the Quidditch loss that's killing him, but the weakness of it -- the knowledge that Niall was nothing to him three months ago and now he's making Louis change his every priority. That feeling of gamely reorganizing his life for someone else's sake isn't new, but it is different this time. In the past it's been about the pride of it, and the propriety, laying claim to a person he wants to gloat over, who makes him cooler than everyone around him. With Niall it's just about Niall. Louis' sweet, steadfast boy, who could never deserve a bad thing in the world. A vision in a yellow jumper with his hair sticking up every which way from Louis' hands. 

Louis shuts his eyes and the ghostly green nightlight blinks out into black. He knows he's in love with him then. That's when it gets too big. 

Slytherin's taught him not to let anyone close enough to fuck you up, not even your friends, though Louis has been burned before. But no one's ever changed him like this, in a way where they're not asking him to change but he's doing it anyway. He falls asleep terrified, too awash in emotional exhaustion to fight it any longer. 

*

Niall finds him smoking up under the bleachers the next day, sitting on his cloak with a tepid warming spell going and his Transfiguration notes open as if he's going to write the essay McGonagall assigned them for Tuesday more than 12 hours before it's due. Louis' heart flips when he hears the crunch of snow and sees Niall ducking into the covered space. It's flurrying outside, the sky white and thick with winter daylight. 

Niall's got his Hufflepuff scarf tied high around his neck, half-muffling his mouth when he speaks. "Alright, Lou?"

"Hey," Louis says. His voice is rough from too many spliffs in a row.

Niall comes and sits by him on his cloak, leaving an unsure distance between them. "You just by yourself out here?"

"Oli was here," Louis says. "Just left, like, ten minutes ago. He had a Divination essay to finish."

"Oh, right. I checked the Astronomy Tower first, but..." Niall starts, then bites his lip when Louis doesn't respond. "Are you okay?"

Louis glances up at him. His face ruddy with cold, peeking from behind his scarf. Louis' heart hurts with how badly he just wants to say _fuck it_ and tug that scarf down to kiss him. But all he says is, "Yeah. Good catch yesterday." 

Niall's eyebrows knit together. "I wanted to talk to you about that. I know --" He swallows, doesn't seem to know how to say it. "That Snitch should've been Lauren's. You had me with that Bludger, and --"

"Leave it, Niall."

"We can forfeit," Niall says. "I can talk to Sophie. She wouldn't want--"

"Don't be stupid," Louis bites out. He's too high for this conversation, too high to be doing anything with Niall besides pushing his face into his chest and holding onto him, but he can't bring himself to do it. "You won fair and square."

The corner of Niall's mouth twitches. "Since when do you care about fair and square?"

Louis rolls his eyes. "You'll make a Hufflepuff of me yet," he mumbles. 

Niall looks at him, his mouth in a line as he gnaws on his lip in a way Louis has come to know means he's stressed. The space between them feels substantial in a bad way, where it's holding them apart rather than asking to be crossed. Louis doesn't know what Niall wants him to say.

"So what's this about, then?" Niall asks, a slight edge growing in his voice. "More than just Quidditch, I hope."

Louis' throat is tight and painful. He can't tell Niall that he's scared of how much he likes him, that he's made Louis rethink so many things. He can't give himself away like that, open himself up to getting hurt. He isn't supposed to use his heart rather than his head. And yet he wants to. 

"I just need some time," he says, his voice tiny, a rasp in the cold. 

Niall flinches, and Louis is terrified for a second that he's going to make him explain it, demand at least that from him, but he doesn't. Fucking Hufflepuffs, letting themselves get hurt, just taking it to avoid confrontation. Louis can't even look at him because then he won't be able to stop. Niall deserves so much better. 

"Alright," Niall mumbles finally, dragging himself to his feet. "I'll see you in Charms, then."

"Yeah," Louis says, and he looks up at Niall and nods. Niall stares at him a moment longer, then turns on his heel and shuffles away into the falling snow. It's coming a little thicker now, blowing across the front of the castle and over the grounds. Louis watches until he can't see him anymore.

*

Charms should be a laugh on Monday, but that only serves to make Louis' black mood worse. They go up on the Astronomy Tower and fire off every curse and hex and jinx they're allowed to use and a few they aren't to see if anything can break the inside ward, watching it ripple and flash pink as it deflects spell after spell, occasionally sending one ricocheting into a tree in the Forest and lighting it on fire. 

Louis watches Professor Flitwick douse another one of these with his wand from all the way across the grounds. On the other side of the ramparts, Niall is laughing, standing next to Harry as they confer on what spell to use next. Louis doesn't get how he can just put on a brave face like that when Louis feels like his life is falling apart. He thinks for a moment that Niall doesn't care, and it makes his stomach clench, but then their eyes meet and Niall's face falls. He looks away, and Louis does too. It's much worse like that.

He casts a volley of stunners up at the ward, not really because he thinks it'll achieve anything, more because it feels good, those angry red bursts. He can see Liam eyeing him with a mix of concern and curiosity, but he doesn't say anything. 

Toward the middle of the block they run out of combinations to try and pack it in to go debrief back in the classroom, and in the shuffle on the way down from the tower, Niall ends up in step with Louis.

He flashes a tight smile that Louis tries to return, but it comes out as a grimace. "We did good, didn't we," Niall says, jerking his head back up the stairs. "With that spell. Held up perfect." 

"Yeah." Louis' voice is a little weary, but he tries again to smile. "My brains, your diagramming skills, we could take over the world." 

Niall laughs, a soft huff under his breath. It sends a pang through Louis' chest, knowing what it means to get him to do that, to want to be near him.

They walk all the way down to the third floor together, side by side but not saying anything else. Niall hesitates when they're back in the classroom, everyone filing into their seats. But he goes and sits by Harry in the end.

Louis sees him again in Care of Magical Creatures the next day, being unreasonably sweet with the hippogriff calves they're plying with worms and stroking the feathery neck of a runty russet-colored one the others don't seem to like. He laughs loudest of anyone when Louis makes a joke to the class about whether they ought to be chewing the worms up to spit into the hippogriffs' mouths like mama birds, and his eyes linger on Louis after, his face going soft. It still feels good to make him do that, but it hurts, too, that awful mix. Louis looks at Niall murmuring to his calf across the paddock and feels love and fear jostling for control in a way that can only end badly. 

In a way, he's grateful that Niall is respecting his request for space. Hufflepuffs are obedient like that, and deferential. But he wishes he wouldn't, too. He wishes Niall would corner him and tell him he's being a prick, because he is, and that's what a Slytherin would say to him. But Niall just watches him leave every class without saying goodbye.

*

It's closing in on the end of term, and Slytherin hosts what'll be the last big Friday rager before everyone has to buckle down and start studying. Louis is drunk within an hour of the lights going down in the common room, bodies packed in, a low thud of indiscernible music from someone's wireless. It's nearly an identical party to the one Gryffindor hosted after the wards went up, but the ambiance of Slytherin makes it easier for Louis to swallow in his present condition. Swimmy black-green light and the cool thin smell of the lake are his default comfort zone.

And yet -- he's sitting there by the eerie fire drinking straight whiskey that burns in his throat, listening to Oli and Calvin shout at each other about girls, Stan long since lost to a dark corner and the Ravenclaw sixth-year he sometimes hooks up with. And all of a sudden Louis feels the tolerance for this, for the judging and the nasty jokes and the strutting about, drain out of him. He wants calm and kind and warm. He wants Niall. 

He's up and out the door before he knows what he's doing, slurring back at Cal calling after him, "Just going for a walk." He trips over his own feet going down the dungeon corridor, swerves into a wall and catches himself on the rough stone with one hand, scraping his palm and leaving a pain in his wrist. But he pushes on with tunnel focus and blurry vision, along the low empty hallways toward the kitchens.

When he gets to what he knows is the entrance to Hufflepuff, though, it's deserted, and he has no idea how to get in. He paces back and forth looking at the stack of barrels beside the kitchen entrance painting for a while, debates just going in there and menacing one of the elves into helping him, but he can't even remember which piece of fruit in the painting you're supposed to tickle to make it open. 

He slides down against the wall opposite and puts his head in his hands. It feels good to have his eyes closed, the heels of his palms pressed against them, one raw and smarting from the wall in the dungeons. He could Summon Niall, maybe. He's never tried that on a person. He doesn't know what he wants to say.

Just then he hears a creak across from him, and when he looks up the kitchens painting is swinging open and Niall and some of his Puff mates are clambering out, laughing, loaded down with plates of pumpkin pie and cups of tea. Their chatter dies when they spot Louis. 

"Hey," Louis croaks. 

"Hey," Niall says. He glances at his friends. "Go on," he mutters, "I'll be in in a sec." 

So they go, doing something to one of the barrels to open a passage in the wall. Louis can't focus enough to tell, and anyway they're shuffling about to block it from his view. Secretive-ass Hufflepuffs and their stupid secret common room. Louis puts his head back in his hands. 

He feels Niall sink down beside him, their shoulders and hips brushing. There's a clink of china on the flagstones -- Niall setting down his cuppa and his pie. 

"How's your night?" he asks. 

Louis looks up blearily. "I don't know," he says. "It was fine and then it was shit. And you weren't there."

"Yeah, we decided to stay in. Got the elves to give us some leftovers from dinner." He lifts his plate. "You want some?"

Louis shakes his head. 

"How 'bout tea?"

He nods, throat tight. Niall hands it over, easy as that, and Louis takes a sip that hurts going down.

"Everyone in Slytherin's trying so hard," he says quietly. The words come out before he can think about them. "I never realized until, like -- I dunno. When Zayn was around it didn't feel like trying." He clenches his jaw, looking down at the floor. This isn't what he'd meant to tell Niall. He doesn't know what he'd meant to do. "This year fucking sucks," he mumbles. 

Niall twists his mouth into a frown. "S'not all bad," he says. "We had Charms. Have Charms, like, I haven't even started that essay due Monday."

Louis laughs a little, but the knot in his chest doesn't go away. "Yeah." He sighs, eyelids drooping. "The vibe was just shitty tonight, man. I wished you were there."

Niall doesn't say anything for a while. Louis takes another sip of his tea and gives it back. "Are you really drunk, then?" Niall asks, taking it from him. Louis only notices then that his hands are trembling, a muscle going in his jaw. 

"Yeah," Louis murmurs. "But I just --" And what he wants to tell Niall most is that he isn't a replacement, he's so much more than that, but the thoughts are getting tangled and he can't keep them straight. He shakes his head.

"Lou..." Niall licks his lips, takes a quick breath. "I miss you." Louis looks at him, brings his eyes into focus. "Tell me how to fix it, and I will." 

Louis swallows. "Reparo," he mumbles. Niall's mouth twitches in a tight smile. 

"Is it 'cause I'm a Hufflepuff?" he asks. Louis laughs.

"I wish," he says. Dimly, he can feel his own heart thudding in his chest, the blood close beneath his skin, all his nerves on end. He's too drunk not to say it. "It's just -- it's been three months, and..." He sighs. "I really like you." 

Niall starts to smile with his eyebrows still pinched, like his mouth is one step ahead of his brain. He breathes out a laugh. "You say that like it's the worst thing in the world."

Louis gestures around, like _look where it got me_. His head spins a little, but it stops when Niall takes his hand.

"I really like you too," he says, "but you Slytherins can be fucking mad sometimes."

Louis looks up, and Niall kisses him, only hesitating for a moment. His mouth tastes like pumpkin, and Louis has to smile into it, licking over Niall's lower lip. Everything else is perfectly quiet except for this, the whisper-sound when Louis cards his fingers into Niall's hair, the soft wet noise as Niall pulls away to lean his forehead against Louis', his eyes shut.

"It's okay," he whispers. "It's good."

Louis knows it's good, that it's the best thing. That's why it frightens him so much. What if he can't hold onto it, what about graduation, what if they hurt each other. What about endings. 

Niall shifts back and opens his eyes, and the fear flares and dies in Louis' chest like a spark at the sight of how blue they are, so close, his face open and trusting. Louis wants to deserve that. He wants to try. 

He realizes then that Niall's waiting for him to say something, and he laughs, can't help it. "Okay," he says. 

Niall grins, breathing out. "It's Hogsmeade tomorrow," he says, slipping a hand around Louis' ribs, stroking his thumb against the wool of his grey jumper. "Are you going?"

"I reckon probably."

"Skip it," Niall says. "Meet me here after brekkie, yeah?"

Louis starts to smile. "Alright, then." 

"C'mon," Niall says, and stands, pulling Louis to his feet. "I've probably --" he jerks his head at the closed entrance to the common room. "They're probably waiting to make sure you didn't murder me."

It makes Louis huff a laugh, remembering that Puff concern from the first time they smoked up together. It feels like ages ago. "Reckon you better go, then, before I change my mind."

"You gonna be okay getting back to the dungeons?"

"Oh, I'll manage somehow. Been drunker than this doing that walk." 

"Alright," Niall says. "I'll see you tomorrow." He dithers a moment and then leans in and kisses Louis, soft. Though Niall has an inch or two on him, he feels small with his hand on Louis' waist, Louis touching his cheek.

"Night night," Louis calls to him as he weaves back up the corridor.

"Sleep well," Niall calls back, and then under his breath, hopelessly fond, Louis hears him murmur, "idiot." 

*

Louis has to go back to sleep about six times the next morning to avoid existing with the worst of his hangover, and by the time he drags his arse up to breakfast, the castle has cleared out of almost everyone but the youngest kids. He forces down some scrambled eggs and takes a cup of tea down to the kitchens corridor. 

He can't remember if Niall gave him a time to meet up or not, but he only waits a few minutes before the stack of barrels beside the kitchens slides open and Niall's face pokes out.

"Morning," he says, grinning. Louis raises a hand, grunting, the universal sign for _hungover but hello_. "You alive?"

"Working on it," Louis says. "Am I coming in?"

Niall nods, beckoning, and Louis steps past the threshold of Hufflepuff and into the candle-lit passageway that must lead to their dorms. It feels huge, the moment where nothing evil happens to him and the barrels shut behind them both. A point of no return.

Niall pulls open a round yellow door at the end of the tunnel by the brass handle in the center, and Louis gets a blast of warm air as it opens onto the Hufflepuff common room. He steps inside, staring around. 

It reminds him of nothing more than the comfy den that one friend from home always has, where you spend the summer out of the heat smoking up and talking about girls. It's got lower ceilings even than Slytherin, high porthole windows around the top with an eye-level view of the grass outside. Everything is copper and yellow and buttery warm -- a fire going in a brick hearth, all-year flowers spilling from hanging pots above worn couches. It even smells buttery in here, Louis thinks, though that's probably the proximity to the kitchens. There's nothing character-building about this common room.

A few young kids look up when they enter and freeze at the sight of Louis in his green jumper with the Slytherin crest on the sleeve. 

"It's alright," Niall says, casting a grin back at Louis. "He's cool."

"I could be a vampire," Louis says, taking a dispassionate sip of his tea. "You've just invited me in. You've doomed them all."

"Oops," Niall says, looking at the underclassmen with a helpless shrug. They stare between the two of them like they're not convinced either way. 

But they don't make a fuss, because Hufflepuffs don't unless they actually have a reason, and fortunately for them Louis is not actually a vampire. He likes that about this house -- they're predictable, and loyal before they're unreasonably moral. Not like Gryffindors, who are always mucking about in the name of the greater good. Hufflepuffs are like Slytherins that way -- they stick to their own, as long as their own don't fuck up, and even sometimes when they do. 

Louis leaves his cooling tea on the arm of one of the sun-colored sofas and pauses by something framed on the wall beside the fire. It's a needlepoint, the enchanted stitches crawling to spell out the Hufflepuff verse from that one song the Sorting Hat does sometimes. _You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal. Those patient Hufflepuffs are true, and unafraid of toil._

Louis had forgotten this one. There's so much less about it that flies in the face of Slytherin than he's grown accustomed to thinking, and it describes Niall like it was made for him besides. And, Louis thinks with a warm little kick in his chest, made for someone willing to put up with Louis the way that Niall always does, too. 

Niall comes up beside him. "What's it for Slytherin again?" he asks.

"Cunning, any means to an end, make your real friends," Louis recites, hand over his heart.

"I think you would've done well in Gryffindor."

Louis squawks. "Offense. They're passionate losers, I'm a motivated winner." 

"Fine line, that."

"Yeah, well, the Hat asked me, but I like where I picked. You, meanwhile, are a Puff through and through." 

Niall straightens up, lifting his chin and giving a cheesy grin. "And proud of it." Louis snorts. He eyes the needlepoint, now respelling the word _patient_ in careful yellow stitches. 

"For some reason I think that's why I like you so much," he mumbles. 

Niall's face does something funny then, flickering like it takes the smile that spreads across his mouth a moment to find its footing, and it occurs to Louis for the first time that maybe this feels as big to Niall as it does to him. He's staring at him, heart in his throat, when he feels Niall's warm fingers find his hand. 

"C'mon," Niall says. "Come meet my rat."

Louis laughs, and the knot in his chest unravels. "That is the worst chat-up line I've ever heard in my life," he says, but he goes anyway. 

The sixth-year boys' dorm is cozy and simple, five beds made of a polished caramel-colored wood with black and yellow patchwork quilts for bedspreads. There are white fairy lights strung along the walls and golden curtains drawn across the high porthole window, only keeping out half the winter sunshine and giving the room a dream-like glow. 

Louis locks the door behind them, trying to be subtle about it. "I feel like I'm in a beehive," he says. 

Niall ignores him and goes digging in the trunk at the end of what must be his bed, his guitar propped up beside it. Louis clambers up onto the mattress to look at the Muggle posters on his wall. A band called the Eagles, a football squad in navy blue, Irish rugby decked out in green. Unmoving pictures of friends, of a younger Niall with his mum at the London Eye and his dad outside a tiny rowhouse. 

"Here we go," Niall says, and he emerges at the foot of the bed with a little white rat face and tail poking from between his cupped hands. Derby hops onto the quilt, scampering up to Louis and twitching his whiskers at him. He's got a smattering of black spots on his back and he looks sleepy, like he's getting on in years, but still sharp. Louis has the distinct feeling he's being judged. 

He holds his hand out, feeling slightly ridiculous, and lets Derby wiggle his nose at it. Louis must do something right, because after a moment the rat skitters into his hand and curls up and shuts his eyes. 

Louis laughs, lifts the rat to eye level and strokes his back. Derby turns in a circle on Louis' palm, looking at Niall.

"He usually only likes Hufflepuffs," Niall says, staring back at the rat. "'S why I never bring him out."

"Guess I'm special like that," Louis says, petting the rat with one cupped hand. 

"Guess so," Niall says. He's looking at Louis when Louis looks up, smiling now, his eyes bright. Louis hands him Derby back, and Niall deposits him in his nest in his trunk and shuts it to a crack again. 

"How's your hangover?" he asks, sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed. 

"Improving," Louis says. "Must be something in the air in here." 

"The good vibes," Niall confirms. Louis snorts. 

"C'mere," he murmurs. 

Niall goes to him, crawling over the quilt until he's kneeling in front of Louis, touching his cheek. 

He's quiet for a long moment, and then he murmurs, "I thought you were gonna, like, throw this away. Us, I mean." He swallows, eyes flicking up to Louis' and back down to his cheek like he's scared of what he'll see if he looks too long. "I thought you got sick of it." 

Louis catches Niall's gaze and holds it, shaking his head. "The opposite," he says. He nuzzles forward so his nose brushes Niall's, their breathing the only sound. 

"I was gonna be so mad at you," Niall says softly. 

And Louis doesn't want to ruin the moment, but he has to say it. "Hufflepuffs don't get mad."

It makes Niall smirk. "You'll make a Slytherin of me yet." 

Louis kisses him, only has to tip his face forward a few inches to do it. "Wipe that smirk off your face," he says, and kisses him again before Niall has a chance to respond. He bites at Niall's lower lip until he's gasping, kisses the corner of his mouth and then the hinge of his jaw, beneath it, sucks a mark into the column of his throat. 

He spent too many days not kissing Niall while he was freaking out, has so much lost time to make up for. Niall gasps quietly into his hair when the pressure of Louis' mouth goes sharp, then sighs out a little sound when Louis smooths it over with his tongue. 

"What do you want," Louis mumbles into his skin. He pulls his head back, catches Niall's eyes. Niall's breathless, staring at him with his kissed-red mouth wet and open. He can't seem to find the words. 

"Alright," Louis laughs. He slips his hands under Niall's jumper and pushes it over his head, pulls his own off too and gets rid of his trousers for good measure. Niall scrambles to do the same once Louis has started, and then they're sitting there in pants, two skinny boys just staring at each other. 

Louis licks his lips, and when he says it his voice comes out rough. "D'you wanna fuck me?"

Niall inhales. "I've never," he breathes, "but -- but yeah." 

"Are you sure?" 

"Shut up," Niall says, breathless, surging into Louis' space. He's hard in his briefs; Louis can feel his clothed dick rutting into the join of Louis' hip as he pushes him back onto the bed, his head landing on Niall's pillows. "Fuck," Niall mumbles. He rolls his hips into Louis', his thigh pressing into Louis' cock. Louis groans. He pulls Niall in, one hand around his shoulders and the other cupping his arse, and they rock against each other for the space of one breath, then two.

Niall breaks away with a gasp. "I don't know the spells," he says, "for, like." His face is a gorgeous deepening pink, and Louis laughs, one of those sudden joyful bursts that feels like it cures the last dregs of his hangover. 

"I've got you," he says. He lifts his hips to slip his shorts off and then reaches for Niall's, holds his eyes as he tugs them down his thighs. They've hooked up plenty of times now, have passed hours in Slytherin and the library and deserted classrooms and beneath the Quidditch stands, but they've never been fully naked together, and Louis takes a moment to just look at Niall -- his thin chest, the folds of his thighs into his hips, his cock pink and bobbing between his legs. And the rest of him. Freckles in places Louis hasn't seen, and the way the muscles of his calves look where he's kneeling, and the tip of his nose when he leans in to kiss Louis again, in a rush like he can't stand being laid so bare under his gaze. 

Louis shuts his eyes, wraps a hand around Niall's cock and wanks him languidly while they kiss just because he can, until Niall is panting into his mouth. 

"Alright," he says, looking at Louis with bright eyes. 

"Patience, Puff," Louis says, and he tries to smirk but it's just a genuine smile. He takes Niall's hand, grabs his wand and murmurs the spell, passed by word of mouth from one enterprising student's sex magic book generations ago, to squirt some lubricant onto his fingers. 

"You good?" he asks, when Niall hesitates. "Here." He grabs one of Niall's pillows he isn't lying on and slips it under his hips, then grabs Niall's wrist and guides it down. "Not rocket science." 

Niall laughs. "You still don't know what that means."

"No," Louis says, "but I'm good at pretending." 

"No you're not."

"Shut up and get your fingers in me, Puff," Louis says, holding Niall's gaze even though he can feel his cheeks coloring. Niall makes him shy like it's his first time doing everything again, but if he's shy Niall's downright bashful, flushed all over, his fingers halting as they reach for Louis. 

He sighs encouragingly when Niall circles his rim with a thumb and then slips a finger into him, working it in and out knuckle by knuckle until Louis' encouragement is turning genuine, humming in the back of his throat. 

Niall asks the question with his eyes when he slides a second finger in alongside the first, and Louis nods, his eyes slipping shut. Niall rubs his fingers into him, spreading and circling them.

"Little more," Louis says, and then Niall's fingertips brush his prostate and Louis' hips jerk. "There, there," he gasps. Niall does it again with purpose, and Louis cries out, back arching. 

"God," Niall whispers. "One more?" 

Louis' nod is more urgent this time, and he bears down on Niall's fingers when Niall slips a third one in, working himself open and seeking pressure on that spot again. He moans loud when he gets it and is thankful for the soundproofing charms he's come to expect from the Hogwarts dorms. 

"So hot, Louis," Niall mumbles into his neck. 

Louis moans behind clenched teeth and his cock blurts precome onto his belly as Niall spreads him open, teases his prostate with two fingers again. "Alright, alright," he says. "Now, you can do it now."

"Okay." Niall watches Louis' face, reverent as he draws his fingers out slowly. He smears the rest of the lube along his cock, and Louis watches the flushed head of it poke from his tight fist. He's aching to touch himself but he wants to wait, to give Niall this. 

He casts a protection spell and then spreads his legs, but Niall presses one of his knees back as he leans in and lines up, and Louis laughs, breathless. "Go on, then," he says, and he keeps his lidded eyes on Niall's face as Niall pushes into him, his shaky exhale coming on a moan. Louis' mouth drops open at the feel of being full of him, and then he throws his head back. Niall's chest is trembling with his shallow breathing.

"Fuck," he says, tight and quiet, "oh my god." He pushes forward until his hips are flush with Louis' arse, and there's something close to panic on his face, his eyes wild. He leans forward to kiss Louis, but Louis tosses his head. 

"Move," he gasps, and Niall scrambles to do it, drawing back and thrusting in again, and after a few tries he finds a rhythm and then he's fucking him. He's still pressing Louis' thigh back with one hand, and his other is beside Louis' head, his thin arm quivering beneath the weight of his body as he drags his hips back and thrusts into Louis over and over. 

Louis can't take his eyes off him now, off the blotchy flush deepening over his chest, the way his wet mouth looks shaped around a moan every time he bottoms out and rocks Louis' body backward. Louis tilts his hips up, trying to pull Niall in with a knee until the angle is near-perfect and Niall's hitting his prostate almost every time, and he only realizes then how loud they are, the sound of skin on skin and the way they're both groaning with it, panting and sweaty atop Niall's yellow quilt. 

"Fuck it," Louis bites out, and he goes to fist his cock, to pull himself off in time with how Niall is fucking him, but Niall gets there first. 

"Let me," he says, hoarse. His palm is hot and tight against Louis, smearing precome along the length of him and pulling his foreskin down. He jerks him with impressive coordination as he fucks him, and Louis can't catch his breath, can't do anything but stare up at Niall and feel him everywhere, moving with him. 

He gasps when the heat spikes in him, when he knows he's close, and he reaches for Niall and drags him in to kiss him, damn the angle. Niall's breath is ragged in his mouth, and his hips are rabbiting against the backs of Louis' thighs, his hand struggling to keep up its rhythm.

"Together," Louis pants, "Nialler, I'm almost there."

"Yeah," Niall moans. "Christ, Lou." He wraps a tight fist around the base of Louis' cock and Louis groans, all his nerves keyed toward it, his heart racing with how much he wants to come. Niall kisses him again, rocks into him once more and then gasps, "Now, now," against his lips, and release comes in a flood when he loosens his hand around Louis' cock, hitting him in waves as he feels Niall jerk inside him, too. Louis' come stripes up his stomach, and Niall is moaning loud in his ear. Louis can feel the way he's filling him up, hot and wet, and he gasps quietly. It's been too long since he had that feeling, and he loves it even more with Niall. 

It's a long time before Niall slips out of him, and they both wince, still breathing hard. 

"Mess," Niall mumbles, dropping onto his side next to Louis. It's apparently all he can manage. Louis reaches for his wand with a leaden arm and cleans up his stomach, waves his wand haphazardly at the top of the quilt and the come trickling out between his thighs and then lets his bent leg down.

"Good enough," he says. He turns to face Niall, pushes back into the bracket of his arms and kisses him, nudges the tips of their noses together. 

"Wanna have a nap?" Niall mumbles. Louis nods, and they fumble around getting under the covers together, still naked. The golden daylight in the room feels soaked into Louis' skin, warm on Niall's flushed cheeks, on his blue eyes meeting Louis'. 

"Was that good," Louis asks him, "your first."

Niall blinks heavily, like his eyes might stay closed. "Yeah," he murmurs, "was." 

"Good." Louis lifts his chin and manages a proper smirk this time. "Knew it would be."

"Sure you did." Niall sounds half-gone already, but Louis kisses him again anyway. They fall asleep in the quiet under Niall's quilt, face to face. 

*

Term is nearly over then, and they spend almost all their time together writing essays and studying for midterms. Sometimes Louis sits with his housemates at meals and sometimes they sit with each other, actually attempting a bit of bonding with skeptical friends. One Thursday night they sit at Ravenclaw because Harry insists ("A cultural exchange!"), and it's a laugh. 

Even Louis' mates don't mind. They like the stories Louis brings back from foreign lands such as these, if only in a somewhat judgmental way. But they've forgiven Louis, too, for the Quidditch loss and for being weird. Louis knew they would if he kept groveling and argued the case enough. Slytherins can be reasonable too, or else it's a _keep your friends close but your enemies closer_ kind of thing. Probably a bit of both.

Their midterm for Charms is going to be to write a long-term care plan for the wards, and they study for it together with Liam and Harry in Ravenclaw. Louis feels a bit like he's on some kind of speedy drug, pixie dust or something, surrounded by all that academic fervor at dark wood tables amid the imperious navy blue upholstery and bronze fixtures on the walls. It's like a miniature library with less off-tasking.

Harry keeps going on long, nonsensically philosophical tangents to try to help them read his notes, while across the table Liam and Niall are hexing different-colored mustaches onto each other's faces. Louis keeps up a steady stream of disdainful commentary, argues with Harry about magical theory he doesn't actually understand. They make it work somehow, in the end.

Louis wants to play a round of two-aside to blow off steam and procrastinate on revising for Potions and Transfiguration when they finish the Charms block, but Harry has Muggle Studies the next day and Liam has Divination, neither of which Louis thinks they particularly need to study for, but they're dedicated students like that. Niall has Herbology but he says he can't prepare any more for it or he'll start to sprout leaves, and they aren't worried about Care of Magical Creatures, so they go flying on their own. 

"Hang on, though," Niall asks, once they're already in the air, tossing a Quaffle back and forth. "Don't you have Defense in the morning?" 

Louis laughs. "I swear you know my schedule better than I do. Yeah, but it's just an essay that's due, I did it already. We did the practicals a few weeks back." 

"Oh yeah, that Patronus. Did you get your grade back yet?"

"Outstanding," Louis says, smiling wide. He chucks the Quaffle overhand, and Niall catches it, curling it under his arm. 

"You know, you never told me what your memory was." 

Louis rolls his eyes. "You already know."

Niall flushes, which means he actually didn't know, or else he's just being cute. "Yeah, but I'd like to hear you say it."

"Are you gonna hold that Quaffle hostage 'til I do?"

Niall nods smugly, hovering in mid-air a safe distance away so Louis can't charge him and steal it back. He's quick on that broom. Louis sighs. 

"First time under the stands I thought about the bonfire night," he says. "Tripping and listening to you play guitar." 

"And?"

"Second time in class it was the wards night, alright?" Louis can feel the flush on his face, which only makes it worse. "Putting 'em up, and you and me in Gryffindor Tower, blah blah blah. Now give me the damn ball." 

Niall's got that look on his face that makes Louis' heart trip sometimes, soft and open as he gazes at him, his eyes shining. Like Niall can put everything Louis feels for him into a single expression, for the world to see.

He flies over rather than throwing the ball back, comes up alongside Louis and leans over to kiss him. There's nothing but the wind beneath their feet, the snow and everything else distant and forgotten beneath that. 

*

King's Cross is always a mess at the start of the Christmas holiday -- first-years seeing their parents for the first time, everyone exhausted and unwashed from exams and too much end-of-term drinking, half their things forgotten on the train or all the way back at school. Louis loses Niall on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters as he looks for his mum, holding onto Lottie by one hand. 

"There they are!" Jay pushes through the crowd with the whole gaggle of Louis' sisters in tow, and Lottie shrieks and tugs away from Louis to run over to her. Jay bends to give her a squeeze, then kisses Louis on the cheek and looks him over, hands on his shoulders.

"It's good to see you, love. You been taking care of yourself?" 

Louis nods and makes a useless noise, smiling hazily.

"So worn out he can't even speak," Jay says, pinching his cheek. 

"Mum!" 

"Sorry, darling." She kneels down to talk to Lottie, and Louis tackles his little sisters into a group hug. 

He looks around when he manages to surface and spots Niall's blond head on the other side of the platform, talking to his dad. 

"I'll be right back," he says to Jay, and pushes across the platform through a blast of steam from the idling Hogwarts Express. 

He meets Niall in the middle.

"Hi," Niall says, breathless. He's holding his owl cage, a blanket folded to cover it. "I meant to give you this on the train, but -- distracted." 

Louis laughs. "Is that what we're calling it?" They had spent most of the ride making out in a back compartment, or else trading Every-Flavor Beans with Liam and Harry up front. "Give me what?" Niall lifts the owl cage, and Louis frowns. "Isn't that Niamh?"

Niall pulls the blanket off with a flourish. It's not Niamh, but a tiny grey owl with round yellow eyes that take up half its head, hooting curiously at Louis. 

"Niamh's meeting me at home," Niall says. "This is Kestral. I got him in Hogsmeade, while you and Liam and Cal were trying to get into the Hog's Head that one time. I thought, um. You could write me."

"Niall," Louis says, dazed. "For me?" He takes the cage gingerly, holding the owl up to look. 

"I wish I could get you to use a fucking cellphone," Niall adds, grinning, "but we'll get there when we get there."

Louis ignores this nonsense. His heart feels too big for his chest. "Kestral," he repeats. Kestral hoots agreeably, and Louis looks around the cage at Niall. "He's mine to _keep_?"

"Yeah." Niall's smiling, pink in the cheeks. "Happy early birthday. And Christmas. And New Year's."

Louis shakes his head. And he would have laughed it off, once upon a time, but he can't think of a joke. He just wants to kiss Niall. And it's okay. 

"I'll write," he says. "I'll miss you."

"I know," Niall says. He reaches for Louis' hand, the one that's not clutching Kestral's cage, and Louis takes it as permission. He leans in and kisses him once, too quick, but there was never going to be enough time. He hugs him for longer, and then their parents are calling to them, looking amused where they're standing on opposite sides of the platform.

"Bye, Lou," Niall calls, waving. 

"See you soon, Puff," Louis yells back. And it could feel like an ending when he leaves him at the station, but it doesn't. It feels like they're just getting started.

**Author's Note:**

> i and a really lovely graphic for this fic can be found on tumblr, [here](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/post/133023144998/heart-out-on-my-sleeve-by-temerity-nialllouis). thanks 4 readin :)


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